Second time’s a charm

The adoption agency application is a long and arduous task. It doesn’t appear that way at first. Three simple pages. Fronts only. A whole page of which is to list friend’s and family’s addresses. How hard could it be? Well… take a look at some of these and tell me you wouldn’t get stuck scratching your head:

Race.
Caucasian. (And they didn’t give you choices. You have to spell it out yourself. That meant a little trip to the dictionary, folks.)

Ethnicity.
Kiki = Heinz-57. (Or does Pure Bred American Mongrel sound better?)
Steve = Italian-American. (Can’t have them thinking he just walked off the boat. That was his grandparent’s job.)

Complexion.
WHAT?? Seriously?? Okay. I admit it. You got me. Scarred. My complexion is scarred. All those years of adolescent acne. Accutane hadn’t been invented yet, what’s a gal to do?

Religion.
Sure. Whatcha selling? If I haven’t tried it, I might be game.

Emergency contact people, list three. Each.
Really? We did check the box saying we’re married. To each other. So… um… seriously… my three contact people are the same as his. But. Okay. Whatever.

5 people who are not relatives who have seen you with children.
Did you catch the part that he’s Italian? His friends ARE his family. That’s how it works. The mob prefers it that way but shhhhh… don’t tell. We don’t talk about family business. Other than that. Well. We don’t have children. Which is why we are here. So we don’t really hang with people who do have children. Kinda a catch-22 there, folks. But that’s okay. We’ve got some good dirt on people. I’m pretty sure they’ll lie for us to keep their secrets. Again… shhhhh… we don’t talk about family business.

One head-crimping week later, three fully chicken-scratched pages and a $400 check lighter, off it goes to the post office. Chocked full of our friend’s and family’s information. Not to mention our complexion and social security numbers.

Only to get a call the next day saying they received our envelope.

“Wow.”

“Great.”

“That was fast.”

“Post office is on the job!”

“What?”

“What was that?”

“Whaddya mean it was empty?”

“Well, then, how did you know who to call?”

“Are you SURE it’s empty?”

“Of course I’m certain it’s not sitting on the kitchen counter. I don’t normally mail out empty envelopes.”

Lovely. Now some crazed postal worker has all our personal information, right down to the colleges we never graduated from, and a $400 check. And as an added bonus, we get to fill it all out and mail it off a second time.

Seriously. We aren’t trying for the third time’s a charm gig. I wrapped that sucker in so much scotch tape they knew exactly who to call to say they’d received our application and it’s going straight into the system pronto-like, without even looking up the phone number.

So. The good news is the application is in. Our first meeting with our social worker is next Wednesday. And if you get a call asking if you co-signed on a loan for Kiki and Steve. So sorry. Blame it on the postal system.