Weekend Whine
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
This was a bad week. Most of it involved work, but unfortunately I’m not allowed to talk about that here. I’ll be reported to the powers-that-be in the Mothership. Sigh… Let’s just say that it’s hard when you keeping telling upper management something and they just refuse to listen. Hopefully that little snippet won’t get me in trouble.
This weekend, I’m also sick to death of AdoringHusband’s pitiful attempts at a job search. Most of his searching involves applying to a few jobs online, never getting a call back, then his looking victimized and pathetic. This has gone on for almost a year, and I’m tired. It always seems to fall to me to say, “did you contact XYZ from Company A?” to which he replies, “no, I forgot.”
Then when he gets really pitiable, he goes to “I’m not employable.” Oh bring out the violins! The man has a BA from Columbia and and MBA from Wharton. He’s worked at several of the top investment banking companies in the country. If he’s not employable, then who the freak is? Sigh…
So this week I broke down and decided to pay for a job coach so that I can relinquish my role as de facto coach. And where does that stand this lovely weekend? Well nowhere since they haven’t made contact. Seems he’s never been available when she calls. I’m thinking to myself, how the hell can you not be available when you are looking for a job? And all he does is give me the pitiful look, that he has perfected to a science.
I know that you might think me uncharitable, but I’ve been dealing with the AdoringHusband job search in one form or another for almost the entire length of our 4 year marriage. It is getting very old. Hopefully the job coach will help him figure out what he’s doing wrong or not doing enough of (networking, anyone?). But I need to cross that off my list. He’s an intelligent, extremely sharp, capable man, but this prolonged unemployment is turning him into a whiney 4 year old. Sigh…
What else do I need to whine about? Well how about the adoption? This is only a minor whine. This week our Dear Birthmother letter was approved, however, there was that little issue of making it look “visually appealing.” Since my scrapbooking skills were decimated by my perfectionism, I thought of doing waht my social worker suggested: using Kinkos to typeset the pages.
I call the local FedExKinkos from work asking about typesetting. “I need to get my adoption profile typeset. Do I need to come in at a particular time to meet with the person who would do this?”
“No, just come in anytime and we’ll take care of it,” I was told by the voice on the phone.
I then arrive about 7 PM after work. Some late adolescent boy with two earrings that look like white thumbtacks finally offers to help me. I explain about the typesetting and offer him my thumb drive to look at the files. He then asks what kind of paper I want it printed on. Of course, I haven’t a clue. That was the whole point of having it typeset right? So they will figure out how to make it pretty. I tried explaining to earring-boy that I haven’t a clue how to set up the letter properly and prettily, that’s why I want the typesetting. Then he’s all, “well if you have it typeset it’ll cost $90/hr with a minimum of 1 hour.” He seems to be missing the point that I don’t care what it costs if someone would just take away the burden of making it look pretty. I’m paralyzed at the thought.
Finally it dawns on me to ask, “So are you the person who does the typesetting?” It seemed to me that the person who does the typesetting would actually be offering me suggestions about how things should look, and earring-boy hadn’t offered even one little thought.
He replies, “No, the manager does the typesetting.”
“Well may I speak to the manager?”
“He’s not here. He works from 7 AM to 3 PM.”
“Well, why the hell did you tell me to come in anytime, when the manager is only here at certain hours?!”
In reply I received a very blank look. I turned and left, cursing the fates under my breath.
When I got home, I decided to post on the adoption listserver I belong to questions about using Kinkos for the profile design. What I received in reply were a bunch of typically female, passive agressive comments essentially telling me how very gauche it would be to use Kinkos since creating the profile page by hand with one’s husband is a “labor of love.” One person went so far as to suggest that using Kinkos for the design would remove all sense of their identity from the profile itself. And I’m thinking to myself, someone must be on crack. If the profile consists of the Dear Birthmother letter written by husband and myself, and the photo collage consisting of pictures of the two of us, how the hell can the arrangement of said items on a page remove our identity from the profile? Clearly I was not going to get assistance from this source.
I then decided to check the web for adoption profile design links, just in case the Kinko’s manager was a clueless as earring-boy. Guess what I found? The lovely Joanna of Our Chosen Child. I sent her an e-mail Thursday morning, and within a few hours she had replied. A flurry of e-mails later, I felt like we were old buddies. And she, an adoptive mother herself (and an adoptive breastfeeder) agreed to help me create a jazzy, snazzy 2 page profile so that we can finally make it to the books. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.
Joanna also told me about Nancy at Adopt-Now. She was looking for African American or biracial birthparents for an expectant mother of a biracial child. I was like, cool, I’ll check it out. The situation sounded good, though the mother was not due until August. (I can’t imagine such a wait). I still e-mailed my information and got a call back from Nancy later that day.
Now I get to show my adoption ignorance. My goal was to see if the expectant mother was in a state where our agency was located. What I didn’t realize was that Nancy (who is a lovely woman) was something called an adoption facilitator. I’ve not seen that term before. Yet what I learned was that I would have to pay anywhere from $9000 to $18,000 for this facilitation, in addition to what we’ve already paid our agency and the placement fees.
I immediately backtracked to AdoringHusband to discuss. I think I have mentioned AdoringHusband’s cheapness before. So you can probably imagine his reaction when I mentioned the facilitator’s fees. He was sputtering! “Finder’s fees are usually 10%. I can see $2000 but not $9000 (which happens to be our placement fee) and $18,000 is out of the question!” I eventually calmed him down. I think we’ll just take our chances without a facilitator. But if you are in the market for one, Nancy seems really great.
Did anything good happen this week? Hmmm…..
I finished both of my baby blankets. This one for my baby:
And this quick one for my nephew Erik:
I also started the baby kimono:
and ordered the yarn for the baby bunting in pale yellow with celadon trim:
I also got a good price on the crib/dresser/changing pad combination
from Baby Box. (Katherine there was so helpful!) Everything is ordered and should be here in 2-3 weeks. I’m still waiting for the Orbit which is on backorder still. Sigh…
I guess the only other fun/good thing is that I’ve started a digital scrapbooking course at Digital Scrapbooking University. I think I’ve got the collage thing down:
I’m onto templates this week.
So that’s about it for my whining. Now I’ve got to go out and buy some bras that actually fit my ginormous ta-tas. On Monday I’m off to lovely Kansas City. Loads of fun.
Everyone stay warm.
Technorati Tags: adoption, knitting, ramblings, scrapbooking, baby