Friday, January 13, 2006
Go back to Start and Draw Again
Today, at work, it was rather slow. As a matter of fact, my boss told me to go home at noon. Well, I decided to stay and work on our dossier. I decided to re-read the manual and see if I missed something. Oh Crap! I made a mistake.
Before I go on, let me tell you why I think I am making mistakes. I LIKE TO SKIP TO THE BACK OF A NOVEL AND READ THE ENDING THEN READ THE BOOK. If the book is boring, I will gloss over the non-exciting parts instead of trashing it. It drives my husband nuts to watch me read a book. The exception to this rule is anything Jane Austen or Harry Potter.
So, I'm skimming through the manual and come across the statement about the employment verification letter. Ah, Heck! I didn't ask our employer (Scott and I work for the same company) to put a comment about prospective continued employment. AND guess what? I sent off our employement letters to get certified in CA on Monday.
You want to hear something scary? GWCA sends out a newsletter with dossier tips of the week. When I booted my computer this evening at home, in my inbox was waiting the tip of the week. Today's tip, Employment Letter (and Financial Statement). How weird is that?
Anyway, the e-mail states we should fax or e-mail the dossier consultant the documents before sending them off for certification. I KNEW I could do that, but I was trying to be self-sufficient. Now I am out a few stamps and $40 for certification fees. From now on, I'll send them the documents prior to starting the certification. Fortunately, I only have two docs which need to go out of state for certification and authentication. The rest need to be certified in Austin and authenticated in Houston.
The birthcard I sent to LA to get certified may get sent back to me unprocessed. I put the secretary of state address as the sender's address on my returning fedex airbill. I was reading the LA website and it said do not list secretary of state as sender on return label. I pondered what a return label was for a few days. It's like looking at a word you are writing and you think you misspelled it, but it just doesn't look correct. To make a long story short, I put the secretary of state's name and address on my returning airbill. Maybe it will escape under the radar.
So we have lost a whole week of progress on our dossier. You're probably wondering where Scott is during this whole process. Hmmm....I dunno. I guess I am doing a good enough job at screwing up, we don't need two people messing up. He has been supportive and doesn't criticize me when I goof up. He's been basically saying the dollar amount lost is such a small amount compared to the total cost of the adoption. He's read the manual and knows it is difficult to follow. He told me to consider it part of the pain of being paper pregnant. The end result is we are bonding with our unknown child(ren) during the paperchase, just as if we were biologically pregnant. When I was pregnant, we found ourselves constantly touching and caressing the belly. Now that we are trying to complete our dossier, we find ourselves patting and hugging the document folder.
Before I go on, let me tell you why I think I am making mistakes. I LIKE TO SKIP TO THE BACK OF A NOVEL AND READ THE ENDING THEN READ THE BOOK. If the book is boring, I will gloss over the non-exciting parts instead of trashing it. It drives my husband nuts to watch me read a book. The exception to this rule is anything Jane Austen or Harry Potter.
So, I'm skimming through the manual and come across the statement about the employment verification letter. Ah, Heck! I didn't ask our employer (Scott and I work for the same company) to put a comment about prospective continued employment. AND guess what? I sent off our employement letters to get certified in CA on Monday.
You want to hear something scary? GWCA sends out a newsletter with dossier tips of the week. When I booted my computer this evening at home, in my inbox was waiting the tip of the week. Today's tip, Employment Letter (and Financial Statement). How weird is that?
Anyway, the e-mail states we should fax or e-mail the dossier consultant the documents before sending them off for certification. I KNEW I could do that, but I was trying to be self-sufficient. Now I am out a few stamps and $40 for certification fees. From now on, I'll send them the documents prior to starting the certification. Fortunately, I only have two docs which need to go out of state for certification and authentication. The rest need to be certified in Austin and authenticated in Houston.
The birthcard I sent to LA to get certified may get sent back to me unprocessed. I put the secretary of state address as the sender's address on my returning fedex airbill. I was reading the LA website and it said do not list secretary of state as sender on return label. I pondered what a return label was for a few days. It's like looking at a word you are writing and you think you misspelled it, but it just doesn't look correct. To make a long story short, I put the secretary of state's name and address on my returning airbill. Maybe it will escape under the radar.
So we have lost a whole week of progress on our dossier. You're probably wondering where Scott is during this whole process. Hmmm....I dunno. I guess I am doing a good enough job at screwing up, we don't need two people messing up. He has been supportive and doesn't criticize me when I goof up. He's been basically saying the dollar amount lost is such a small amount compared to the total cost of the adoption. He's read the manual and knows it is difficult to follow. He told me to consider it part of the pain of being paper pregnant. The end result is we are bonding with our unknown child(ren) during the paperchase, just as if we were biologically pregnant. When I was pregnant, we found ourselves constantly touching and caressing the belly. Now that we are trying to complete our dossier, we find ourselves patting and hugging the document folder.
Comments:
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First, from a technical reader's point of view and a second time adoptive parent, I can tell you that the manual you are referring to, is poorly put together. And if it makes you feel any better, it was WORSE two years ago.
Second, we're in the same boat with my wife's letter. She says that they will REFUSE to add anything another than name, rank, and serial number. A thought she had was to have her immediate boss (and not HR) write a simple letter stating "blah, blah, blah, can't guarantee we won't boot her tomorrow". And then have THAT letter notarized and attached to the other employment letter.
Some bosses fear doing something like that. It depends on the coolness of yours, I suppose.
But, we're also going to have to run this by A.S. to see if this method would be cool.
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Second, we're in the same boat with my wife's letter. She says that they will REFUSE to add anything another than name, rank, and serial number. A thought she had was to have her immediate boss (and not HR) write a simple letter stating "blah, blah, blah, can't guarantee we won't boot her tomorrow". And then have THAT letter notarized and attached to the other employment letter.
Some bosses fear doing something like that. It depends on the coolness of yours, I suppose.
But, we're also going to have to run this by A.S. to see if this method would be cool.
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