Homestudy & Profile

Our homestudy is done. It's actually been done for a few weeks now but with vacation, work, celebrations, and life in general I've been derelict in my blogging. I know I tend to be gone for awhile then post like mad. Trust me, if I knew how to change the date stamp in Blogger for my posts so they wouldn't get lost in the mix then I'd write a bunch and dole them out slowly over a few days. But back to the homestudy! I think it went well.

Our case worker arrived fashionably late. I think this is to allow frantic parents-to-be the chance to finish up scrubbing tile grout, dusting light bulbs, and alphabetizing their media cabinet contents. We were doing none of these though, we were ready in time with baked goods. However, our house was also full of smoke, the smoke detector was going off, and said baked goods were a complete disaster.

I used the homestudy as an excuse to try a new dessert, a pretty yet seemingly simple dessert. I refused to purchase any number of round tart pans I saw. I finally found myself at Williams Sonoma, the evening before the homestudy, staring at the rectangle tart pan I wanted. However, I continued to stare because it was clearly smaller than the one used in the recipe. No size was stated in the recipe for the tart pan, and I wrongly assumed tart pans were standard - ya know like pie pans and loaf pans. Nope. I bought the WS tart pan and headed home to bake, hoping all would be fine!

I made the crust the night before and the filling. The morning of our homestudy, I spread the filling over the crust, placed my not-at-all-inexpensive fresh, organic apricots into the frangipane filling and put it in the oven. I should've put a pan under it, but I was in a hurry and while I did consider it, I thought the filling didn't seem like something that would bubble over. THAT was the mistake of the day. Being that my tart pan was on the small side, the filling bubbled over, poured over, goo'd over and basically found every and any way out of the tart pan that it could. It proceeded to burn all over the bottom of the oven.

I had asked D to check on it and by the time he did the damage was too far gone, and by the time I got into the kitchen alarms were going off and every single window was being opened and fan cranked. The tart had cooked long enough so I took it out and turned off the oven. Luckily I had made two desserts and the second had turned out, well decent which I rank below "good." Those were my vegan lemon bars. They never did setup fully and while they were delicious they were also ugly and soupy. Regardless though, the caseworker passed on any food; she didn't even want water. So much for all that.

She was there for just over two hours and the questions were not as difficult as I expected. It was the same stuff that will go into our profile. D described himself, then I had to add to it and vice versa. We had to discuss why our family was totally awesome but also what "opportunities" we felt we had here in Chateau Thompson. The example we were given is that some couples say they need to lose weight. So I guess anything can be an opportunity then because I'm not sure how weight issues reflect on parenting. Our opportunity was completing our home renovations - lame! I mean shouldn't we have had to get into the nitty gritty?

Trust me, I'm okay with it having been easy peasy. Maybe since we have a lil one who's made it over 2 years here without major damage she went easy on us? Her tour around our house was less involved than the ones we give to our friends. She had no desire to see the laundry room for instance which was actually a disappointment for D. I made him finish it before she came and apparently for no reason. Ha! I'm just glad it's done now.

After writing down our responses to her questions, taking our paperwork, completing our safety inspection, and explaining the process she took her quick partial tour and left. Then I devoured my lemon bars. I had planned to have those as breakfast as she snacked. I was famished. I also tried the tart. My poor tart. I might as well have cooked it over a campfire. It was smoky and goopy and generally disgusting. D's comment was that perhaps tarts are advanced baking. Pa-sha!

We're still waiting to get the final report from the court. That would be the report that the caseworker files after our meeting. She seemed to imply we'd passed. What we have gotten is our breakdown of how our first payment was spent and I was none too happy. We currently have $37 remaining. That's fine; we've known we'd be paying more. What's not fine is that for each of our 90 second phone calls, in which the front desk clerk rushes us off the phone, we are charged for 15 minutes! Wow. Let's just say my next call will be lengthy. The front desk clerk and I are gonna be bffs with all my chatting. Honestly, I'd rather be charged by the minute and have each minute be more expensive than be charged for at least 3x more minutes than were used.

Rant done.

We're currently working on our profile (or as some call it, life book). It's going to be spiral-bound and printed front and back, roughly 20 pages with text and full-color photos. I have it 80% completed. D needs to write more, and I need to add more photos. After that I'll be formatting and tweaking. This thing is a monster and it's taking forever! I'm sure it will be gorgeous when done and used for years by our lawyer as the shining example of what a book should look like. More importantly though, I think there's a birth mother out there that will read this and not surprisingly choose us!