Launching the New Blog Design

Well here it is folks, my newly redesigned blog! And introducing... the new name! The look has changed (although it's very similar to the last one), but I've also added more content. There are more links and resources about adoption, yoga, running, the Episcopal Church, other cool stuff that I like, as well as new ways to share and connect. I will be working on adding more content over the next few days. Check it out, leave some comments, or drop me an email! Have a great day.

The Death of My Self-Esteem

First of all, I do not recommend that ANYONE try to sell a house when waiting to adopt a baby. Conversely, don't try to adopt a baby while you're also trying to sell your house. It's absolutely terrible for self-esteem, at least it is for mine. This is going to sound stupid to some people, but I'm going to say it anyway because it's what I'm feeling and it's honest. Adoption is hard on the self-esteem when you've had to wait for months and months, it just comes with the territory. We've been waiting since the disruption for roughly seven months. Every time I call our agency to find out how things are going, they tell me that our websites are getting lots of hits and that our profile has gone out to lots of birthmothers and that everything looks great! Um, well yeah... but we're still waiting. Clearly that means there's something wrong with us and we'll never get picked to adopt a baby! Well no, but it can feel like that sometimes. And when the months of waiting drag on and on and on... it can be easy to let those thoughts into my head. But I have to remind myself that our baby is out there somewhere, we just haven't figure out where he/she is going to come from... or when. 

In a strange way, selling a house can elicit the same sorts of feelings. Your home says a lot about who you are. And if you've put as much into your home as I've put into ours, it can be hard to take any sort of criticism from realtors or potential buyers. Each time a potential buyer comes to a showing and decides to go with some other house, it's like a slap in the face. Well, not exactly like a slap in the face, but it's still a rejection. Whatever the reason, they're still rejecting us again and again and again. And while it's not anything personal, it's still frustrating and hard to cope with sometimes. 

Combine the two situations and you've got the perfect storm. Everyday is a new rejection. (And I won't even begin to touch on the old issues this brings up for me.) No baby, no offers on the house. Nothing. And there's nothing we can do about it. Nada. But maybe that's the point. Maybe this whole scenario is a lesson for me in patience. I've said for a long time that my greatest flaw is my terrible impatience. I've always been like that. When I want what I want, I want it NOW. Not ten minutes from now, not tomorrow, not next year. NOW! But I can't always have what I want now, obviously. And I keep saying that I've learned the importance of being patient, but clearly I haven't because it's still driving me totally batty! 

What can I say except that I'm a work in progress? At least I am able to acknowledge my flaws and how important it is to change them. I know that eventually someone will fall in love with our house and want to buy it. And in my heart I know that our perfect birthmother is out there somewhere, waiting for us as much as we are waiting for her. Hopefully I'll be able to endure this time of waiting with at least a little bit of grace and poise.

Not Going to Medical School

Got your attention, didn't I? Those of you who know me well know that I've been talking about medical school for a while now. I applied last year as an out-of-state applicant, knowing that I would probably not get in. Not surprisingly, I didn't. When I spoke to the admissions representative, she told me that they'd received a record number of out-of-state applications last year. This particular school is the only medical school in the state. State law says that they must admit all qualified applicants from within the state first. Then, if there are any spots left over, they can begin reviewing students from other states. So basically, we get the leftovers. Lovely. That's why it didn't surprise me all that much when I didn't get in. I have a very strong application, but I was competing with a LOT of people for only 10-20 spots (if that many). When I explained to the admissions rep that we're moving over the summer, she encouraged me to reapply if we could be moved by the end of June (because then I'd be able to apply as an in-state student). 

That was my plan for the last few months, but when the new health care bill passed I began to rethink my plans. One of the features of the new bill is a change to the way federal student loans for medical school are disbursed. Under the new legislation, students who take out federal student loans to pay for medical school must repay the government with both money (principal plus interest) AND time (I want to say six years, but I could be wrong about that). After completing school, students are required to practice medicine in an under-served community of the government's choosing. Fundamentally, I don't really have a problem with this concept. Obviously if the community is under-served, then it needs good doctors. But since James is planning to stay in the military for a full 20-year-career, this program isn't going to work for me.

At the current tuition rates for the school I'm applying to, four years of medical school would cost me more than $92,000 and that's relatively cheap. If I can't utilize federal student loans, then how would I pay for it?? We considered having me join the service with James. They would pay for all my tuition and fees, and I would earn a stipend for living expenses while in school. I would owe them one year of service for each year they paid for, starting after I completed my residency. So that takes care of that, but there's still another problem... where would I do my residency?

The House Hunting Trip

Most of you know that James and I went on our house hunting trip at the end of April. I was really excited about this because I've been looking at real estate listings online for at least a year. I'm not kidding. For a while I really wanted to build again. So I'd been online looking at floor plans and researching custom home builders. When I went out to see James last fall during training, I actually met with one custom builder and discussed what plan we'd like and what area we might want to build in. In fact, we'd gotten to the point where I was waiting for him to email me a rough estimate of how much our selected plan (and the custom modifications) would cost based on the cost of construction materials at the time. He never did. I suspect the problem was that the builder had so much going on at the time that we just got lost in the mix. After all, we weren't going to contract with him for at least six more months and he had his hands full with current clients. So I can't fault him too much, but it annoyed me none-the-less. 

Once we got our orders to PCS a month or so ago, we realized that we really wouldn't have enough time to have a home built. Most builds take at least four months from clearing the lot to the final walk-through. But we're moving during the peak build season, so I'd be willing to bet that a custom build would take at least five months or more... if you want it done right. And I decided that I didn't want to be stuck five states away during the construction process. I would want to be close enough that I can check on the progress and speak up about things I want changed as I see them so there's time to get everything right (ie, "No I don't like that light fixture anymore. I want to go back to the store and get a different one."). After all, if you're going to go through all the trouble to build a custom home, then it should be exactly and perfectly right. 

So we decided to put off our custom build for the next PCS and just buy an existing home instead. The good news for us is that the area we're moving to has tons of new developments going up. So even if we don't get to have our custom home, we can still have a brand new one. I'd made contact with a real estate agent recommended by USAA (so we can get the Mover's Advantage Bonus Check... cha-ching!) about a month ago. She and I had been in constant contact ever since. She wanted to know exactly what our needs are and what kind of home we're looking for so that the house hunting process could be as stream lined as possible. By the time we left to drive out there, I had about 30 homes on my list of houses to see. Unfortunately for us, many of them were sold out from under us before we even got a chance to see them. 

We were VERY lucky to have some wonderful friends who PCS'd ahead of us a few months ago and who invited us to stay with them while we looked for a new house. I cannot begin to express how wonderful this was. First of all, I hadn't seen my girlfriend since January and I'd missed her terribly. We're like two peas in a pod and it was so wonderful to get to see her again. Second, their dog and ours are best buddies (we have a picture of them together with "Santa Paws" from last Christmas, haha), so Piper was able to travel with us and had a great time playing with Dodge while we were out all day long. And third, we saved a TON of money by not having to pay for a hotel and restaurants for a week and a half. Talk about a life saver! Then there was the drama with the tornadoes... but that's another story for another blog post.

So long story short (ish), we left on Monday, arrived on Tuesday, met with the mortgage broker to get pre-approved on Wednesday morning, and headed out for showings on Wednesday around lunch time. We saw about 12 houses on the first day. Most of them were actually a little above our price limit because so many of the lower priced ones had sold over the weekend. 

May Adoption Update

Still not very much to report. April ended with the highest hit count on our website that we've ever had, and one more hard copy of our profile went out. But still no match, or even potential matches. I did finally get in touch with a home study agency in the new state that can begin processing our new home study right away (hooray!!), and they can reuse some of our documents. That's the good news. The bad news is that we have to pay for a completely brand new study anyway, but at least it's less expensive than the one we got last summer. So I'm in the process of filling out all the paperwork to send back to them along with a copy of our current home study and supporting documents. Hopefully they'll be able to complete it quickly enough such that we'll only need the social worker visit by the time we get into the new house. Fingers crossed!