Tuesday, July 1, 2008

awkward questions

Today was the big day! We had our home study. Minnie, our adoption person... not our case worker, came to our house. The home study had 2 main parts. The home safety inspection, and the interviews. CPS requires a lot of safety regulations, so she had to make sure that we comply. Some things are down right silly, while most things make sense. For example, our medications need to be behind 2 sets of locks (silly) as do our guns (good). We are not allowed to have a trampoline on the premises, and need to put lids on the garbage cans at the end of our 300 feet driveway. That's like asking every person within a 2 block radius to keep lids on their cans. Ah well, we just laugh about it and follow the silly rules. Our home is safer for kids than it ever has. Oh yeah, you can't have dish soap on your counters! it has to be in a locked cabinet (don't mind that there's liquid soap sitting right there too, but that's allowed). After we walked around the house, we only have a couple of things we have to take care of. Joe needs to clean up some of his junk out in the yard -yippee!- and he has to keep his shop locked any time he doesn't use it.
Then we had interviews. The kind of questions we were asked included thing about our childhood, parents, siblings, discipline, and how we deal with problems. The awkward questions were thing like: how do you deal with frustration? How do you deal with love? what are the strengths and weaknesses in your marriage? What is your biggest weakness? And what about Joe's? I found it interesting that it was easy to answer the positive questions, especially about Joe and our marriage. We have a great marriage. Sure, we fight occasionally, but we resolve our differences quickly. I feel really lucky to have found someone that meshes to good with myself. But when you are in an interview like this, I don't want to only give positive answers, for the fear that she thinks I am omitting anything. So I end up giving some lame negative answer, something that really isn't that bad. It's also hard to explain things like, how do you deal with love, anger, depression, frustration, and disappointments. I don't usually assess myself like that, so it's hard to remember, and put into words. I just hope she doesn't think we are somehow unfit. There's this uncertainty. I'm pretty sure she likes us, but there's no way to know for sure until she says: yes, you can have a foster kid.
Now that the home study is out of the way, it's really weird to think that I did all I need/can do, and now all I can do is wait. Minnie told us she'll probably write up our home study by the end of July, and after that we'll officially be waiting for placement.

3 comments:

Nancy Sabina said...

That would be nerve racking! But at least it's done now. Congrats.

Amber said...

The whole process would make me uneasy. Having your whole life looked at under a microscope would make me go nuts. I am glad you are doing it though. I think the end results will be awesome!!

angela michelle said...

I agree--who can answer those kinds of questions?!

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