If I weren't so lazy I'd take a picture of the "education manual" we got from the agency during our initial consultation yesterday - but that would require finding the camera, then uploading the picture to my computer, restarting the computer when it crashes, getting back online, finding the picture, and pasting it in here. In short: too much like work. So you'll just have to trust me when I say it's easily a full ream of paper, comb-bound with plastic covers & tabbed dividers that separate the information that will be used in each of the classes.

"You don't have to read it cover-to-cover," K, the social worker, told us. "It's got tons of information in it that will be helpful to you while you're going through the homestudy.""Well, our classes don't start until October," I said, "and I hate waiting around with nothing to do. I'll probably have it read by Friday."

We laughed, but I wasn't kidding. Except I was wrong on the timeline; I finished reading it tonight.

***

Our meeting went very well. I was only a little nervous, didn't talk too much but laughed a lot. I laugh a lot when I'm nervous, but I prefer it that way. It's not a nervous giggle - it's a belly laugh. I don't think people actually know I'm nervous when I do it.

K went over some information with us, looked over our registration form & asked us some questions. We didn't really have any questions for her - I figured most of the questions we had must be addressed in the Adoption Bible she'd just handed me, and we'll have plenty of time over the next few months to ask any other ones we think of. We filled out and signed an agreement with the agency, releases allowing them to run our fingerprints, and forms affirming that, to the best of our knowledge, we have never been convicted of any crime. We were fingerprinted on the spot; apparently that's the information that takes the longest to come back, so they do it right away to get the ball rolling. We also had to provide our driver's licences and insurance cards to be copied for our file, and the homestudy fee.

My bank account is lighter, but my coffee table is heaving under the weight of the Adoption Bible.

The paperwork isn't too overwhelming. We have to provide copies of our birth certificates, our marriage certificate, our most recent pay stubs and last year's 1040. (For good measure, I'm going to provide my spreadsheet where I track my invoices as they go out & payment comes in; K didn't seem to know exactly what I needed to do to prove income as a self-employed person & that seems as good a method as any.) All of this we already have, ready for my next trip to the suburbs so I can drop it off.

We also have to fill out a form listing every address at which we've lived since age 18, so a complete background check can be run; a financial statement listing our income, savings, debts, etc. (this? worries me. We're going to be paying off the infertility treatment bills for quite some time, and I hope they don't hold that massive debt against us...); and a form listing three non-family and one family reference, with addresses and phone numbers, so the agency can send out confidential reference forms for them to fill out. We have to make appointments with our doctor for medical exams at which he will sign a form stating that as far as he can tell there's nothing physically or mentally wrong with either of us that should keep us from having a child placed with us.

And we each have to write an autobiography, about one page, talking about our families, our upbringing, our relationship, our education, our hopes and fears and successes and failures. I started mine yesterday and am up to two pages - G and I haven't even met yet. How do you condense something as complex as your entire life into a single page?

And now that I've written it all out here...it's more overwhelming than I thought.

***

Our class session starts in mid-October and will finish up the week before Thanksgiving. Once that is done, the meetings with the caseworker begin. There are three meetings, with at least a week between them - one with me, one with G, and one with both of us in our home. Then the caseworker will write up the homestudy, we'll get a copy of it to sign off on before it is filed, and that's that.

We have to also work on our profile in the meantime. There is some information about it in the Adoption Bible, and frankly this is the most daunting part of the whole process to me. The profile will contain our "Dear Birthmother" letter - which chafes right away because the women who read this letter will not be birthmothers yet and it seems really insensitive to use that term to address someone who hasn't even given birth yet, but I can't think of a better way to introduce it than the one that everyone else does - an "at a glance" page where the important information about us is condensed into a little chart, and seven double-sided pages of pictures, recent, with captions.

I like scrapbooking, so the pictures shouldn't be a problem. The "at a glance" thing? Yeah, I can do up a little chart talking about our interests & whatnot - no problem.

The "Dear Birthmother" letter...is going to take some time. I'm really not sure how to write a letter like that, and I hesitate to look at the letters other people have written because I don't want to follow a formula. I want who we are to come through; I want the woman who eventually chooses us to feel an affinity with who we are - to get a sense of Yes. This is them. And I'm not sure I can do that in a single page.

***

I have a ton of things going through my head right now, and I could sit here all night writing about it. But if I did, what would I write tomorrow?