Birth Fathers, Red States and Blue States

On Tuesday I met with a second private adoption attorney, and she was amazing. She came highly recommended by an adoptive family I know here in Boise.

In addition to having reasonable fees (it’ll cost just $250 to get on their list of waiting parents, compared to the agency charging $2,000), I just like the way she thinks. She seems to have a strong intuition about situations and she’s not afraid to go with her gut. She also mentioned making sure no adoptive parent ends up outside his or her comfort zone financially. I’ll still put myself on the agency’s waiting list, but it’ll take time to save up the $2,000 they need.

Another interesting point she made had to do with birth fathers. Naturally, they need to be given notice that they’ve fathered a child who will be placed for adoption. At that point, they can decide to step up and parent or go along with the adoption plan. But in some states, the sex that conceived the child is considered “notice”! So while the law would be on my side with regard to terminating parental rights, that just doesn’t seem right to me. And eventually, the father would come looking for the child and then we’d have that mess to deal with. The attorney and I are on the same page there, agreeing we’d make every effort to find the birth father and make sure he’s on board.

Something else I’m picking up is that it’s much easier to adopt from red states than blue states, due to less regulation. I’m not sure which way I think is better…I think some counseling for the birth parents is good, and obviously some sort of a waiting period post-birth in case minds are changed. But some states (like Colorado) apparently have so many rules and restrictions, it’s difficult to decipher what’s required and even more difficult to meet deadlines. 

My home study visit is scheduled for Sunday, October 2^nd, and the case worker is going to do everything she can to meet the October 15^th deadline so I can apply for the Help Us Adopt grant. I had a feeling when I started in July that things would take a while, but I still can’t believe how close to the deadline we already are!

Thinking About Starting an eBay Store? Don’t Bother.

Last month I opened an eBay store to see if I could earn a little extra money. It’s easy and inexpensive to set one up, and there’s no long-term commitment.

Unfortunately, I realized eBay does a very poor job of driving traffic to its site. There are so many sellers and stores now, I had a bunch of items listed for 30 days and they only got 1 – 5 views in that whole time. A couple of things did sell, but not enough to make it worth my time. I had even done research and checked past auctions to figure out which types of items sell best, but no luck.

It’s also tricky to navigate eBay’s fee schedule. Everything I read said sellers get 5-cent listings, but I couldn’t ever post anything for less than 20 cents. And of course they take a cut when something sells, and Paypal takes a cut when the buyer pays. So unless you’re going to get a wholesale permit and start a massive operation reselling crap from China, it’s probably not worth your time to open a store.

Home Study Paperwork Done!

This morning I stopped by CASI to turn in my home study paperwork. Woo hoo, done! No one was there to take my picture, so I just took one of the building on this lovely September morning. In the next few days I expect to hear from a case worker who’ll make an appointment to come meet me and check out my house, and possibly talk to some family and friends as well. 

This afternoon I have an appointment with a second private adoption attorney who comes highly recommended by another adoptive family in Boise. So far I’m impressed – they were very friendly on the phone yesterday and made room for me to have a free consultation right away today. It’ll be interesting to hear how they differ from the first private attorney I met with and any advantages they might be able to offer over an agency. There’s still a chance I could double up, paying to get on lists with both the agency and an attorney, but financially that’s not too likely at this point. 

The timing of all this is lining up pretty well with work. We were supposed to roll our new website (18 months in the making) this morning, but it got bumped to next week. I just want it to be live and working when my home study is approved, at which point I’ll go to my boss and HR and let them know what I’m up to. We’ll need a plan in place of a very short notice adoption (24 hours isn’t unheard of) as well as a less-urgent plan in the case that I’m matched with a birth parent before the baby is born.

It’s exciting stuff for sure…I just have to remember that the average placement time for a single parent through the agency is 2 – 3 years. I insist I’m special and better and different though, so my wait won’t be as long. :)

Wine Tasting For the Win

Last night I was blown away by the generosity of family, friends and people I'd never even met! Heidi at Bueno Cheapo Vino hosted a private fundraiser wine tasting and about 20 of us gathered to sample a white, rose, red and some bubbly before heading out on other Saturday night adventures.

Thank you, thank you! to everyone who came, for the generous donations, and to BCV for being such an awesome host. Here are a few pictures from the evening.

Natalya entertained herself in the kids' area and helped Heidi rinse and bus wine glasses. (Singing in this shot.)

Fur Baby Checkups

This morning I took Jayda and Luisa to the vet for some routine stuff – Jayda needs a dental and I wanted to get some standard blood work done on Luisa to check for early signs of kidney issues, diabetes, etc. now that she's 9 years old. I have no reason to believe she has health issues, but I know how much cheaper it’ll be to treat something if it’s caught early. (I don’t have pet insurance on the cats.)

Our morning routine was pretty different, so the animals all knew something was up. I couldn’t feed Jayda breakfast so I left her in her kennel till it was time to go. Of course it was very exciting for her to have Luisa in the car with us, but about half a mile down the road she forgot she knew her. Commence naughty OMG-A-CAT!! behavior. And Luisa was doing her car meow, so you can imagine the chorus of rawrrr YIP rawrrr YIP all the way there.   

The plan was to pick up Luisa at lunch, go over the blood work results and take her back home to Monica (who is surely having her own little meltdown being the only one at home right now.) Unfortunately, the vet called to inform me that “Luisa has decided we won’t be examining her today…” because she is claws-out lunging at anyone who tries to go near her. They’d need to sedate her just to check her teeth or draw blood, and because I fed her breakfast, sedation isn’t an option. So we’ll have to try again another day, minus a noisy car ride with Jayda to start. Thankfully they’re not charging me for today’s visit.

Side note: I don’t usually use the term “fur babies”, but I hear it a lot from our customers and I think it’s sort of funny.

Like a Giant Game of Memory

I plan on turning in my home study paperwork Monday, so this week I'm gathering the last little bits of info I need. Stuff like proof of employment, proof I can add an adopted child to my health insurance plan, etc. I also need to make copies of my personal documents, and that's where Memory comes in.

Social security card? In the metal Double Bubble box in my top drawer. Birth certificate? Tri-folded on top of a Bratz notebook in a 13x9 pan in the garage on a piece of scrap carpet under the stair railing I took out last year. Found it in less than 5 seconds. See, that game is good practice for later in life!

Brand Damage

I was bummed to find out today that I won’t be giving out samples of 44 North at home games after all. And annoyed to be reminded that employers often feel like they can treat applicants like garbage.

The promo is a joint effort between 44 North and Boise Weekly, and I heard about it through an ad agency on Facebook. I emailed L. at Boise Weekly and she wrote back a couple of times, then we spoke on the phone.

We scheduled a brief meeting for last Friday at 8:30 AM. The plan was to give me a t-shirt and have me sign up for shifts since she’d already seen my picture and resume and interviewed me over the phone.

L. showed up 20 minutes late (her coworker had to call and tell her I was there waiting) and was totally unprepared, so all we did was chat for a moment and she handed me a football schedule, saying I’d be part of the team. She was friendly and seemed excited about how qualified I was. Next up was going to be a “pizza party” meeting with 44 North to assign shifts and learn about the brand.

Considering this was the third gig I had lined up, I stopped looking for others. And I was actually looking forward to promoting two local products at local games. At $50 bucks a gig, it would have been a decent chunk of money to put toward my adoption expenses.

By this morning I hadn’t heard back from L., so I emailed her and she replied “We filled the 44 North Boise Weekly Street team-Sorry I did not get back to you sooner.” Uh, yeah. You filled it by hiring me. Remember?

I think what she meant was, “I’m sorry I’m so disorganized that I forgot our meeting last week. I’m also sorry that I forgot to bring you a shirt, that I forgot to tell you about the info session with 44 North, and that I actually completely forgot I had hired you.”

Boise Weekly and 44 North should probably rethink who they have recruiting for them.