Tying Up the Loose Ends and ICLW

Happy ICLW!  Things around here are better than my last post although there's still a crap-ton of work to do.  It's all about giving myself a break at the moment.  Everyone thinks I'm a great colleague, worker-bee, friend, mother and wife.  Perhaps I need to start thinking it too.

I had a discussion with Therapist about whether I might want to TTC again.  Yeah, I know, I've been adamant here in this space about NOT TTC and really not caring about getting pregnant, but it's something that had to be explored.  In the course of our discussion, I talked about how we would have to be aggressive (I'm 38, unexplained infertility with minimal endometriosis....and I'm 38, did I mention that?).  The thought of that made me even more tired than I already am.  The thought of going back to an RE and of living my life in 2-week increments felt crushing.  There's no guarantee that if we do treatments (which I would push to IVF and I'm not super excited about giving myself rounds and rounds of shots) that there will be a baby at the end of it.  So, truly, I'm not down with that path.  We aren't preventing, and I have been more relaxed about the rhythm method, so it's down to a miracle pregnancy at this point.  I'm ok with that.   Things with my family are somewhat better, but I've had to draw some pretty strict boundaries at the moment because I don't have the energy to deal while I keep working on myself.

Despite our adoption wait probably being longer than the first time, I at least know the outcome.  That's more comforting than getting anxious about whether or a procedure worked and then being crushed when it doesn't.  We will use a web profile site, and that might help us find a match more quickly.  It's a little weird thinking about putting so much information out to the public-at-large, but that's how some matches are being made these days.  (Isn't it funny how I'm worried about our adoption profile, which in reality doesn't contain as much information as this blog?)

Today we finally got around to shooting our video profile. I watched our last video to get an idea of what we said previously and everything turned out differently anyway.  I think we did better this time in front of the camera and I felt more relaxed about it.  Part of the reason is that we aren't as into trying to "sell" ourselves as we were the first time.  C never watched our video.  As in most cases, it was one thing in our profile that caught her attention, and the decision was made.  I have started my letter and am about half way through.  Good thing I kept copies of our letters because there isn't a whole lot to change or add and in fact I'm trying to whittle it down a bit (it was 6 pages long last time...too long!).  S has yet to do his, but I know that if I get mine done first, it'll motivate him to get his done. :)

Once those three things are completed, we'll be done with our agency profile and will have to start work on the online profile, although we may put that off for a little while. 

Speaking of financials - We freaking followed the I-R-S rules for the credit and those jack-offs just sent us another letter saying they'll get back to us in 45 days.  Morons.  We're still waiting for a big chunk of the credit to be refunded to us because we amended our 2010 tax return for the 2008 and 2009 adoption-related charges.  I'm so pissed.  We should have just tried to claim the whole damn thing under our 2011 return (which is NOT how the rules read).