Homestudy's done, and the INS isn't Burger King

The good stuff: had our last homestudy visit with our social worker yesterday, so now our part of that process is done. The agency will take a week or two to review it and then send it off to the USCIS (I still call it the INS). No telling how long it will take them to approve it and finish off our I-171 form (like gold in the adoption paperchase), but we're hoping to get it back at the end of April. (fingers and toes crossed).

By the way, the cats were really sucking up to our social worker. I don't know if they just liked the smell of her dogs or if they were trying to help prove that we'd be good parents, but they came running downstairs when she arrived and spent the next hour fawning over her. Those of you who have been to our house--and never seen a whisker on those two---will find this as odd as we did.

More good stuff: we got a call and an email saying our application has been accepted, so now we officially have an agency. We just have to fill out a bunch more forms, send them a bunch more money, and try to get good at waiting (guessing TubaDad's going to trump me on that one).

Not so fun: spent two hours waiting at the INS (no TubaDad I'm not going to call it by that other long name, so get over it), to ask questions about our paperwork, only to have the lady at the counter tell us "I don't know anything and I never will and I won't help you." Ok, maybe I'm paraphrasing just a bit, but basically we could/should have just put the papers in the mail and waited a month for the letter saying if anything was wrong with it. No big deal, but now we know, this isn't Burger King and you do NOT have it your way.

We're out of town right now, it's concert week, and we made a little vacation out of it. Had cake for breakfast (people say they're eating muffins, but come on--everyone knows they're just naked cupcakes!) and will have a massage later and listen to TubaDad play something called Shaherozod (no clue how he'd really spell it, I'm sure he's cringing as he reads this).