woo-hoo part II

My last post was made in a bit of excitement and with a reasonable lack of sleep, so I wanted to give a better idea of what's going on as of now. As I said before, we've been approved for adoption, which means that we can proceed forward with our paperwork. Our social worker is sending us a humongous packet of forms and whatnot that we will have to fill out. This is our homestudy packet and once we get it completed, which will probably take us 6-12 weeks, we send it back and then we'll arrange for a formal homestudy. Our homestudy might be sooner because she is not based in St. Louis but is planning on coming to see us when she's in town next month. Once the homestudy is completed and everything is approved, the packet will be sent to the Korean government for their approval. Once that happens, we'll get our referral, which means we will be matched with a child. That is a MAJORLY BIG DEAL!!!! They will send us a picture and as much info about the child as they have. After we accept, we'll just have to wait for our "travel date", which in our case, is when the child will be brought to St. Louis. That's one of the nice parts of this program is that we can have the child escorted here instead of going there. We do plan to visit Korea, but more when he/she is older and can enjoy it. All of this stuff should take anywhere from 9 mos (on the VERY short end) to 18 mos. As she indicated, the adoptions are moving swiftly so we are hoping it isn't 18 mos. and more like 9-12.

whew. It seems like a long time but it'll be here before we know it. It's going to be a nerve-wracking wait for all of this to happen (for me anyway, Jeff is way chill about this stuff) but I plan to occupy my time with various baby projects like designing a nursery, super cool kid art for the room and whatever else I can find to keep me from chewing my nails. Oh yeah, I also have to graduate from college and finish remodeling my house. No biggie.

WOO-HOO!!

I got a call yesterday around 5:45 from Judy at Holt who said our application had been approved and we are OFFICIALLY GOING TO BE PARENTS!!! She said she received our file from the main HQ and we are a perfect match for the Korean program. She also said that the Korean paperwork is moving very swiftly through the government, so we might not have as long a wait as we thought. We will have our first homestudy visit in about 3-6 weeks and in the meantime, we have to scale a small mountain of paperwork. I was so excited that when Jeff got home I ran out to the car and was jumping up and down in the street. I'm sure the neighbors thought we won the lotto or that I had finally gone bananas. Jeff had no doubt we would be approved but I'm a worrier so I wasn't going to be satisfied until we got the official go ahead. This is kinda like our "we're pregnant" moment!!

This means we have 3-6 weeks to get this house put back together. Holy crap, people. It's on!

Know when to say when

Well, I have decided to bow out of the children's book project. Not that I even had the job in the first place, but I realized that if I did get it, I wouldn't be able to do it anyway between school, homework, house stuff and baby stuff. I'm disappointed in myself for backing out and I'm sure those involved are thrilled that I backed out the day before, but I'd rather do it now than later. I shouldn't even be assuming I would have gotten the job but on the super remote 1% chance I had, I would have been screwed. I told my illustration teacher today and his response was "that's a wise decision". I think he sensed trouble with this project from the start and didn't think that I would be ruining my chances of a career in the business by saying no. He said part of being a good designer is knowing your limitations and until I'm done with school, this kind of project is probably an unrealistic goal. That being said, it has made me more intent in pursuing this kind of thing in the future because I really think it's a good fit for me and a good outlet for my graphic design skills. I took a creative writing class a few semesters ago with the intent that I would write my own books to illustrate so that's my new plan. That way I can work on it at random times and have more opportunity to research layouts and stuff without someone hovering over me with a giant neon sign flashing "DO IT RIGHT NOW". I get that all day long, thank you very much.

I ran for the border

I just returned from a "research" trip to Borders. I have a love/hate relationship with said establishment. I love to go in and peruse the books for a ridiculously long time and yet I would have to refinance my house to afford to actually purchase them. Case in point, an 11 page children's book, while very clever and gorgeous, was $19.95. WTF?! Have they always been that expensive or is this the golden age of picture books and no one told me? No wonder my parents only gave us old receipts as bedtime reading material. I KEED I KEED!! We had actual books.
I managed to find a couple in the bargain section but the majority of those were either Sesame Street, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc. and I'm not interested in that. I don't care about Dora or her explorations. Where are the parent I ask? Would you let your daughter traipse all over the freaking globe with some kind of monkey thing as a guide?? I think not.

I think I'll write a children's book about my weirdo dogs and charge 50 bucks for it. Zoey is the weirder of the two and if she were an actual child they would suggest she wear a helmet for her own safety. She is afraid of the wood floors we installed and goes from rug island to rug island when she needs to move through the house. She is also afraid of the vacuum, thunder, ladders and steps yet she will go after a rottweiler like nobody's business. She is truly the most bizarre dog I have ever known and yet I love her to pieces. Cleo is the older of the two and is basically annoyed by everyone around her. She is like a wise old owl except that she licks her pooper so she isn't that wise.

Mum's the word

Last night was my first intermediate cake class. The beginner class was over the summer so I've had a bit of a break. I take it with my mom, which is good because she rocks at the baking part, which I generally suck at. Our last class was nice and fun but this time was......different.

The class was full of all these women who a) couldn't keep their mouths shut long enough for our instructor to speak, and b) couldn't stop one-upping each other with their cake skills, even though we are all at the same level. It got so bad at one point my mom turned to me and said she was going to hurl from the overwhelming stench of stuck-upedness. I wanted to go up and smack them all in the mouth to silence the snoot, but I just focused on my flowers. This whole class is about making flowers and borders, which is cool. We learned the reverse shell, the rosette, the rose bud and the mum. The mum was my favorite. We still had fun despite the squawking hens around us. This one woman in particular kept interrupting the instructor and felt as though we all wanted to hear her stupid stories about the cake she made for her daughter's birthday. Hey lady, guess what? We don't care so ZIP IT!

Next week we learn violets and apple blossoms. Hopefully in silence.

The Darkest Depths of Mortar

We had quite a busy weekend here at chez Brady. We spent all day Saturday and Sunday working on the kitchen. Saturday was "get all the little crap done day", so we adjusted cabinets, attached the remaining pulls, assembled and hung the extra cabinet we bought last weekend and got the countertop bases secured down. Jeff was a master at building the counter bases and they all fit perfectly. We also cut and attached the cement backerboard Saturday night so we could start tiling first thing Sunday. We ended up running errands Sunday morning and didn't really start working until noon but we were still able to finish all the tile work by 6pm. That's a record for us!
We decided to actually cut and dry fit all the tiles before we mortared anything, which would seem like the logical thing to do anyway but we aren't logical, which all in all made the laying of the tiles go very, very smoothly. We made a few bad cuts due to my inability to read a ruler properly so we're going to have to order another box of tiles before we can do the bar. That sucks but realistically it will probably take 2 weeks to get the bar base constructed. Yeesh. I'm getting home improvement burnout at this point but we are SO CLOSE to being done. The counters turned out great, by the way. I think we were both nervous because we ended up using a porcelain floor tile, which isn't exactly conventional for a counter, but it looks like I wanted it to look. Well, almost. We both thought the tiles were much darker than they turned out to be but I have to chalk that up to the crappy lighting at Expo Design Center. The countertop was probably the hardest thing we had to decide upon. We had a teeny tiny budget so most solid surfaces or anything cool like glass or metal were out and I HATE granite so that was out, too. That left laminate (icky) or tile. I had originally planned to use Carrerra marble but every time I mentioned it to a tile person I got a lecture on how I shouldn't use it because it stains and scratches and blah, blah, blah, so I chucked that idea as well. I'll post a picture when we get it grouted. Now I just have to figure out my backsplash pattern................

Still no word on the adoption. I know it's WAY too early but I'm anxious and I want to know right now. I was daydreaming about cribs the other day on the internet. I found one I like on some modern baby stuff site and it was about $1500. WTF?! Can I not have modern design at an affordable price? Who am I kidding, of course not unless it's IKEA and I wasn't impressed with their cribs (although their bedding is quite cute). I must resist the urge to look until I know something.

I finally mustered up the courage to call the book guy. He was really nice and put me in touch with the author, and I spoke to her this afternoon. They're both interested to see what I can do (as am I since this is scaring the caca out of me). They seem to want a style that I can do, so that's a plus but I'm not saying any more about it until I meet with them this Friday. It'll make me too nervous and I don't want to go all mental.

P.S. - That's a Lord of the Rings/ Led Zeppelin reference in the title. NERD ALERT!

overload

Well, it's finally Friday. I don't have much to post about but I have blog guilt if I don't put something up. This week has sucked due to the fact that I have spent almost every free second I've had sitting at this very computer working on homework. I'm simultaneously working on a 4-panel brochure on the architecture in Forest Park, a 3-panel brochure on the wildflowers of Missouri (it's as exciting as it sounds), an illustration involving a chef mailing a live chicken in a bottle from an iceberg during a tornado (just go with it), an exercise on the Gestalt theory and a holiday shopping bag for the Galleria that not only do I have to design, but I actually have to make it into a real shopping bag. whew. I love when people tell me they'd rather be in school than working. Really? Really. I beg to differ.

On that note, I am going to spend time this afternoon working on my own art so that I can decompress and gear up for this to start again next week.

Oh, to follow up from my last post, I did call the illustration man but got a voicemail and left a message. Due to the fact that all of the self-confidence I had a the start of the week has been sucked out of me, I don't expect anything from it.

I also want to send my condolences to my good friend Geryl who had to have her beloved dog put to sleep last night. He was 13 and had a great life because of his awesome mom and dad. I'm thinking of you both.

Oh, one last thing, I want to say happy birthday to sweet little Maya. I am absolutely dreadful with birthdays but I know it's coming soon so Happy Birthday Maya!