Weekend Update

I had a rough week at work, but everything I needed to get done I finally got done. Now comes the next big stage: my dad's operation. He gets in on Monday, has a pre-op on Tuesday and then the actual ankle fusion surgery next Monday. All today I've been working on getting his room and his medical devices ready.

It's been tough trying to forecast the next two months of recuperation. He has a very different kind of lifestyle. Some parts of it are fairly normal for a Japanese person of his age. For example, he needs a wireless internet connection and a fancy automatic tea kettle in order to really be comfortable. We skip breakfast or make a fried egg sandwich; he's going to need fish soup and natto first thing in the morning. Other areas are just really eccentric by any planetary cultural standard.

We had our second homestudy visit this week. We talked about the process and focused on what schools we were thinking about. I've done a lot of research so I know what's out there, but it's impossible to make a firm prediction about what we're going to do, since the range of possible children is so wide.

One thing the worker was very carefully to discuss with me was the effect of a possible pregnancy. I explained again that if I became pregnant, I would call the agency right away. If they didn't have a match for me within a week or so, we would have to put our application on hold. What I'd want to avoid at all costs is a situation where a child is placed with us and we only have a few months before I give birth. That's too confusing for the child; they'd need more stability than that. Eight to nine months seems doable to me, though. Of course this is assuming I can get pregnant, which we don't know for sure yet, although signs point to yes.

From the agency's point of view, their top priority is to avoid having us accept a match, but then backing out of it. So my timeline works for all parties involved. The worker is going to make sure to talk about this timeline in the homestudy.

While she works on our homestudy, our next step is putting a "lifebook" together. This isn't a lifebook in the usual sense of the word. It's actually a black and white PowerPoint presentation describing our family.