Up to Tuesday at 1 PM

Monday, we found out that Huck's LOC change request had been denied, and that he'd be staying at basic. We didn't know why, since only Olsen has that information, but our options were to resubmit it with new information (which we don't have, since we gave them everything) and wait another month for it to go through the system and back to the same person, or forget it and move on. We decided to move on. No big deal really, so long as we could still manage to get Huck qualified for adoption assistance (our goal there is medical coverage and any amount of money over 1 penny per month). It was disappointing, since the denial would make the adoption negotiations harder, but not impossible.

Meanwhile, the adoption paperwork landed on Huck's attorney ad litem's desk. She emailed Huck's (original) caseworker, Marla, saying how happy she was to see our case moving to adoption, and that she looked forward to seeing her again, and if she (the AAL) could do anything, to let her know. Marla, who was Huck's caseworker for about 18 months but moved away last December, wrote her back to say that she'd moved 200 miles away 11 months ago, so she wasn't active on Huck's case anymore, but that she'd included Olsen and Olsen's supervisor in the emails. Right about then the AAL had a WTF moment, and she called us. We were in the middle of assembling a room full of Ikea flatboxes, and the ringing was drowned out by hammers and power drills, and by the time I noticed the call on the machine, it was 11 pm.

Yesterday, we had our Tuesday SW visit, then gymnastics. At gymnastics, I called Bob, my lawyer, to give him a heads up on the adoption movement. I hadn't talked to him for a few months, so I wanted him to know the status and what we're trying to accomplish. We talked on and off for about two hours about all the things that have gone wrong, from the lack of visits by Olsen, to the state's witch hunt, to the file, to Huck's self-injurious behavior.

You know how, even if your life is bizarre, you don't always realize it, because to you it is just another thing on top of other things? Talking to my lawyer (and recounting all the things that have been Olsen'd up) helped distill the idiocy and incompetence and neglect we've all been dealing with for the last year.

Still, the conversation ended with me saying, "Hopefully that's behind us and we can get through this without too much more stupidity."

(And thank pancakes I was at the Home Depot during all this. Places like Home Depot calm me. Walmart freaks me out, but Home Depot is soothing. Deciding between compact fluorescent daylight bulbs and normal daylight bulbs, then finding pipe fittings to make into another lamp, then checking out the galvanized duct work to decide which size would make the best cupcake stand, then running my hands over Silestone and granite and hardwood and travertine and daydreaming about remodels we'll never do while simultaneously recounting nastiness was helpful. I even considered using roof flashing as a chair rail or 3 foot welded wire fencing as as wainscotting.

Can you tell we're working on our house? More specifically, we're getting my workspace together. I lost my old workroom when Huck arrived, and we didn't have the energy, time, or money to get it back together in the guestroom, so my work stuff has been spread all over the house for months. The kitchen table has all the leaves in it, and my stuff takes up 80% of it, and there's overflow all over the family room and living room and kitchen counters and garage. So now, my combined Anniversary and Christmas present from Hubs and my parents and grandparents is the getting together of my room.)