Life Plan

Oct162013

Furniture and Frustrations Galore

Not much is happening on our end..

The new furniture was delivered and it is awesome! I finally feel like we live in a grown ups home. The rug and couches make everything look so much better. The dresser is just amazing and so pretty that even if this adoption doesn’t happen*, we’re moving it into our bedroom. We’ve removed all the cartoon, superhero and Doctor Who artwork from all the walls and are going to hang it in the kids room. Yeah that sucked. I was so used to seeing the Andy Warhol-esque Darth Vader, psychedelic 4th Doctor, the Avengers arm wrestling and tribute to Jim Henson art in the bedroom. (What do you mean we have weird taste in art?? lol) Not to mention all the other art in the living room and kitchen.

Going along with the grown up theme, we took down everything and need to re-frame them all with black frames. Black couch, black frames, yellow walls (not our choice), and a multi-colored rug to tie everything together.

Steve has to re-do his fingerprints for some unknown-to-us reason so he’s going in Friday for that and to meet with our ACW. She wanted me to come down as well but I’m running a 600+ person event Friday at work so that’s not happening. Besides, she’s coming to our house on Saturday for home visit #2.

No, no she’s not. She just emailed to cancel.

I feel like a rock that was rolling along so nicely and gathering momentum that just smashed into a wall with a gap slightly smaller than the width of the rock. Like we have to fight to push through to get this done. Just letting the process work seems to not be working for us. In fact, it is frustrating both of us and normally Steve is pretty unflappable. He’s my rock and even he’s having issues with this whole process.

I know in the end we will have a child and be parents, but… when?

We set our 2nd home visit appointment nearly 3 weeks ago and she just said she had to reschedule due to “an unexpected conflict.” I’m sorry, but that’s not really our problem, is it? If I had a personal issue but had a work thing that was super important, I would have to alter my personal issue or find coverage for the work or personal thing. In fact, I had to email my boss to see if I could leave work early next Tuesday to go deal with this stuff.

This just makes me feel like she’s talking down to us: “Please remember even if the interviews are done in my office, that doesn’t replace that fact that I still need to do a walk thru in your apartment.” Am I over-reacting? Probably. It’s OK, I know this whole process is making me freak out over every little thing.

I really hope my next post has good news in it!

* …anytime soon. We’re getting pretty frustrated with the process, but not nearly as much as my friends M&E in Orlando!

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Jun042013

Holiday Cards… It’s only June!

I just got choked up thinking about our Christmas card this year. We haven’t sent one in a while, but this year we’ll definitely be sending them out. I was driving home from work when I started thinking about a Christmas card with me, Steve, and our kids. And all the sudden I got choked up and tears sprang into my eyes.

I was also thinking about how I would have the kids posing with their backs to the camera or in the shadows so I can actually post pictures of them on Facebook and other social media sites. And actually, on here! Thinking of posing them with their hands and arms so that they made like big shadow heart on the ground and I can post that. From what I understand, we aren’t allowed to post pictures of their faces until they are legally our children.

I told one of the parents from school today whom I absolutely adore and she has been so amazing to me this past year and a half. She was so excited that I think she almost started crying when I told her we were adopting.

Kids. Family. I’m going to be a mommy.

Classes countdown: 25 days!

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Apr282013

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

Well hello there!

This has been a big couple of weeks in the Fletcher home. Two weekends ago, we decided that, yes, it’s time to expand our family. With a human child. Or 2. (as opposed to another furbaby…)

As the first post in my newly revised blog into an Adoption Blog, I’m just going to post all the updates I made on my Facebook the past few weeks.

adopt1

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adopt2

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adopt3

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adopt4

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adopt5

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adopt6

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adopt7

So there you have it. The facebook updates. Coming up will be my [extremely long] elevator speech about the children, the process, and everything else.

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Apr072013

A Perfect Life

Having just spent the last 2 days at Wordcamp Miami, my passion is running super high for working for myself. Not to mention kicking butt. In my perfect life, RS Creative Solutions will run smoothly and earn us enough money for Steve to do law school and me to not have to work in corporate America.

In reality, I don’t have any consistent clients and don’t get paid for the bulk of the work I do… mostly bc I don’t ever bill for it. From now on, I need to set boundaries, create job scope/ specs, get down payments, have contracts signed all before I ever do a drop of design work.

I’ve been doing this long enough (15 years) that I can’t keep calling myself an amateur. I mean really, that doesn’t help with my design-esteem. Yeah, that’s like self-esteem but for my design work.

I found two somewhat mentors willing to help me with my business and was told that I really need to get to more events in the industry. I was also told our URL was too long. So I bought a shorter one: RS Creates

Now to implement my perfect life.

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Mar122013

Accountability.

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Last night, I made a one-year plan. I sorta wrote it in the dark so the mega huge Sharpie helped me be able to read it.

Why am I posting it here on this blog that I’ve virtually ignored for months? Accountability. I’m putting it out there into the universe. I want to accomplish all these things.

Some are obvious (lose weight, join a gym, pay off cards) but some aren’t so much.

– Publish 3 more patterns – 2 days ago, i published a pattern on Ravelry for a Cabled Owls Hat I made. The hat was super easy, everyone raved about it, requests have been made for different colors, so I write up the pattern and published it. Within 12 hours, I had 4 sales. Needless to say, I was stoked!

– Push RSCS! – did you know that I’m a web and graphic designer? Of course you do! No really, do you? Steve and I own RS Creative Solutions and it is my goal to push it as hard as I can so that we turn a profit. I even have business cards and car magnets. Woo!

– Dump crappy friends – OK, this one is kinda obvious too. We all have those friends (or family members) that are more dead weight then beneficial. When someone drags you down, cut the rope and let the anchor sink.

– Cultivate awesome friends – you know, those ones you meet and have tons in common with and can laugh and giggle for hours? Or those that have been with you through thick and thin for practically your whole life but you have no time for. Yeah those. They need to be cherished and brought more front and center.

– Teach a knitting class – I was in Joann’s Fabric yesterday and picked up their class schedule. I have wanted to learn to quilt for some time and figured this would be a good starting point. Apparently unless I wanted to take several hours off in the middle of the work day, I’m never learning through them. All their classes save a few are before 5pm. I am going to take some of my more awesome pieces and convince them to let me teach kids, teens and adults.

– Get a better paying job with a non-assistant title – I won’t tell you how much I make (it would probably depress you), but I need to make more. A lot more. After all, I have been working since I was 12, in the “real” work arena for 15 years (holy smokes!) and have an MBA. A freakin MBA. And it’s sitting dormant and not working for me at all. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my boss. I really have lucked out having a boss that appreciates me and tries to help as much as she can. And not just bc she got Steve and I tickets to see Bon Jovi!!! But being someone’s assistant is getting me no where. Sure, the experience is phenomenal as I do want to work in development and fundraising, but…. I need a change.

– Research FL and OH adoption classes – there’s a lot more to this one than meets the eye. We want kids. We likely will never have biological kids, but that is OK as there are thousands of children out there without families in foster care. Since we have no idea where we will be living when the stars align, I’m researching both states and downloading both states home study applications. We aren’t getting any younger. We want a family. If I don’t get off my butt and do the work, this will be something else that passes me by in life.

– Have a dinner party at least 6 times – I hate cleaning. Do I need to elaborate? OK fine. Having dinner parties and friends over requires a clean house and an organized kitchen for my crazy recipe hoarding. This will push me to not only clean regularly, but keep things clean.

– Organize, clean and make office into guest room or craft space – in our “next apartment” I have all these dreams for our clean and new space. Um, we live here now. We just signed through August. Why keep dreaming of a pretty craft space with a day bed/ couch when I can do it now?

What are your plans for the next year?

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