Adoption? What adoption?

The past week I've felt much better. Stress about the ever-lengthening adoption wait has dissipated. I'm not obsessing about it, I'm not counting out possible timeline scenarios on my fingers, and I've stopped putting our lives on hold for "when if." The miracle cure? Well there really wasn't one - something inside of me just snapped and gave up when that last 5-day batch of referrals came in. I feel detached from the adoption right now, and I know it's not the healthiest approach, but you know what? After being so wound up, it feels sooooooo good right now. Kind of like when your eye itches and you know you shouldn't touch it but you give in and rub and rub and just groan with how good it feels. You know it's going to blow up and get all puffy and red and even more irritated later, but for the moment it just feels heavenly. Yeah, like that. Anyhow, my new mindset seems to be "Oh yeah, the adoption? It'll happen someday and someone from our agency will call when it's real." And when people ask "When are you expecting your referral now?" I just shrug my shoulders and say (truthfully) "Who knows?" and move on to a better subject. I'm not being flip or impolite, I just really don't know and have completely given up guessing. If someone asks more: "Come on, you don't have any idea? When do you think it will be?" I say (again with naked honesty) "I won't be able to swear that we're next until they refer up through July 13th." Until then, it's anyone's guess. Well anyone's but mine. Don't get me wrong, I'm still 100% excited about the adoption. I still yearn for the day TubaDad comes home from work and our kiddo launches at him giggling and yelling "Daaaaaaaddy!" I still walk into the nursery and feel calm and happy just looking at the things we've picked out for our child and breathing in that wonderful smell (something in there smells like vanilla and baby powder, I think it's one of the stuffed animals). I can't wait to read the same bedtime story 800 times, and give hugs and kisses and bandaids and more. But I don't picture any of these things as sharply as I used to. For now they're sorta fuzzy pictures and they seem pretty far away. They're kind of calm "someday" pictures, instead of anguished "when?!" pictures. And that's ok. It's working for me this week and I'm just going to roll with it and hope I don't blow up and get too puffy and red and irritated next week!