The times they are a changin' and other musings

So here I am, at home, on my second day as a stay at home...er...worker. It is a strange transition from working with at risk and homeless youth to staying at home and running the "family" business. So far, so good. While I still have almost no idea what I am doing, processing orders, putting orders together, and shipping orders is a cake walk when compared to "I got kicked out and I have no where to go" and "I am sixteen and pregnant and couch surfing." I wonder if it is possible to have post-traumatic stress symptoms from a job? I have this uneasy feeling that some crisis is looming on the horizon even though I am running a business, not working with homeless kids anymore. It is highly unlikely that I will encounter any drama and trauma beyond "where is my order?" and the internet crashing.

In my now rather abundant spare time (the Christmas rush has not yet hit) I am reading adoption literature. I have gone through just about every adoption memoir in print (two book shelves full) and have now ventured into the "heavy" stuff. Right now I am slogging my way through "Attaching in Adoption" by Deborah D. Grey (recommended by our homestudy worker). Some of it has been insightful, although much of it doesn't seem very applicable to our adoption. Still, the following excerpt gave me pause for thought:
"Sometimes parents find themselves in situations that seem incredible from the point of view of their own culture. Some children are told that the birthparents have finally arrived to get their child. I have heard this explanation a number of times about preperation for children in countries of the former Soviet Union, in which there is no tradition of adoption. One orphanage worker advised parents, "Never tell this child that she was adopted. It will kill her Russian soul." She answered their logical questions about language by explaining that because their daughter was largely nonverbal, she would not question why they were talking a different language. Some children have come into the country angry with parents. Working with a translator, children have wondered , "Where were you? Why did you leave me in the orphanage?" It makes for a confusing beginning for parents and children (Grey, 2002; 131)

um. ok. I sure hope this is not a common occurance. I seriously question the intelligence of adoptive parents who FOLLOW such advice. Obviously, this is not a situation we will find ourselves in: 1. we are not adopting from Russia. 2. we are no adopting an older child. But still, I would like to think that we would have enough sense to roll our eyes at such advice and do the responsible thing - you know, a little thing called honesty? I thought "keep the adoption secret" era had passed. Apparently not. Or at least not for clients who turn to Dr. Grey for advise.

On other news, we are still waiting for the CPA to finish "writing up" the business. Of course this happens to be a busy period for CPAs (end of a fiscal period or some such stuff), so its taking forever for this step to be finished. Our homestudy will not be written up until this information is provided. This frustrates me to no end, as if we had known they wanted this information ahead of time, we would have had it when we had our homestudy meetings. It is not helpful to have the homestudy agency call me to ask me what email address to send the rough draft to, only to then go on to say they aren't ready to send it yet as without the above information "they don't think it will pass USCIS.." Apparently, R's new job is "too new" to be a reliable income source. I do not pretend to understand the workings of the federal government.
So why, I ask, would you not tell me ahead of time about this, and why bother calling me to tell me you want my email address to send the homestudy rough draft, if you had no intentions of even finishing the rough draft without this information?????