"At Least It Was A Beautiful Day" or "Proof My Dogs Are Psychic"

Soaking up the balcony view...

Today, I had a pretty decent run. Today, I was very productive at work - more productive than I've been in a while. Today, I made an awesome spinach salad. Today, I had a little hot chocolate.

And today I cried... more than I have in a long time....

You see, dear readers (ye brave, ye few), my dogs are psychic.

Yup. Both of them.

In picking dogs, I have the best karma in the world, apparently.

See, about 6 months before my divorce, Clydas - my almost-never-destructive Boxer dog - got a hold of my wedding tape (you know, back when they were on VHS and were recorded on actual tape) and destroyed it.  He knew that relationship was ending, even though I didn't want to see it at the time.

Odin has since picked up the mantle.

For the past 3 days, Odin has been sneaking off to poop in the center of the floor in of the kid(s)'s room. Every... single... day.... even if I took him outside and he pooped a few minutes before. He'd save it until I was behind a closed door (in the bathroom or something) and sneak into the room. He even opened the door to the kid(s)'s room on his own... and pooped. I never caught him in the act, but there is no missing Great Pyreneese "accidents".  They are pretty much the size of Clydas' head entirely.  He'd 'ground' himself immediately afterwards by going in his crate.

Odin knew that something was about to take a giant crap over our plans for a family by summer time.

I could launch into some huge tirade about paperwork and agencies and government and what not, but it's honestly too confusing for the layman to follow and frankly, I'm exhausted.

I can sum it up by saying this:
We overshot on thinking our last vacation was our last trip without kids.
We overshot by daydreaming about My Sailor coming off his submarine to a great-big-little-person hug.  He'll only get a strong wife hug.
We overshot by thinking we wouldn't go into year 3 of our adoption process. It very well may take a miracle to meet our kid(s) by August.  A recent snag has thrown our timing off in a big way, and no, there is no way around it, and no, it can't be fixed.

Apparently it's easier and quicker to get cleared to play with nuclear weapons than it is to get cleared to play with kids...that's an interesting commentary about our society right there, isn't it.

On the upside:
The construction to the house 'should' be done by the time we meet them (or we'll have some other situation hammered out).
I will be able to book my upcoming trip to Florida without having to worry about the kid situation (extra tickets, etc.).
In fact, we may even figure out an international vacation here to distract from all of this - and it's cheaper for 2 plane tickets than 3 or 4.

I have some great friends in the foster/adoption world that are trying to be comforting, but honestly, all I want to do is exhaust my body until I'm too tired to keep my eyes open, and let time pass. The only solution to any of this is time. It's made me do a lot of soul searching and face up to a lot of the things I wanted. A lot of the tears were over things I wanted that are impossible right now.

Here's the thing about adopting older kids -
We know they are already born. We're not adopting an infant. We're not even cleared for kids younger than 4 years old. So I know they are out there right now. It's like having a child in the hospital and looking at them behind the nursery glass. You just want to bring them home, get to know them, and be a family.

Only in this case, 99% of the kids in Foster care are there due to neglect and abuse.

So, imagine that window is frosted - so you can't quite make out the physical features of your kiddo, but you're sure he/she is on the other side.

Now, imagine you hear your kid screaming and crying from neglect and abuse.

Yet, you're just on the other side of that seemingly impenetrable glass.

And you'll stay there for months, or in our case years while someone is hurting kids that are destined to be yours...all the while you're kids are wondering if someone out there really loves them...

That's what it feels like to be trapped in this ever present cycle of paperwork and detours.