Last night I was talking to my sister and I learned that you can buy babies from people called "Baby Brokers." These are real and surprisingly legal. Apparently, there are places in the country where it's still 1950 and there are "homes" for girls and young women who are hiding their pregnancies. These homes are called "Baby Farms" by the adoption community. Seriously--not joking. Anyway, if you decide that you want to adopt an infant, you hook up with a Baby Broker and they go out to the open market to all the Baby Farms and they find you the cheapest baby on the market that fits your criteria. It kind of sounds like buying a used car from CarMax. Both the Baby Broker and the Baby Farm take a portion of the proceeds and you get a baby. This probably won't come as a surprise, but non-white babies are sold at a discount. Again, seriously... I don't think that we will go the Baby Broker route, however I do want to talk to one (kind of just to say that I did). Conveniently, there's a Baby Farm just across state lines from me. My sister said that there is usually a surplus of black babies * and they actually need families to adopt them. A majority of adoptive parents are white and when they are going the Baby Farm route they usually want something "perfect," hence the discount. I'm sure there will be more weird things as we go further into the adoption world, but this one seems unbelievable. However, one of my nieces was left to die in a gutter when she was just hours old, so I guess things like buying black babies on sale really shouldn't surprise me.
I have dreams of a little girl with Afro-puff pigtails, just like I dreamed when I was pregnant. Is that weird?
At work today I had to move desks. There are new people coming out of training, so they are reorganizing where everyone sits. I had just gotten everything situated with my old desk and I was comfortable with the people that I sat near (something that took a long time for me) and now I have all these new people. Tall Paul (who has to be closer to 7 feet than 6 feet) is my immediate desk neighbor, and he seems nice enough. Next to Tall Paul is Anger-Management-Issue Dave. I don't know Anger-Management-Issue Dave well, however I have been told that he is really distracting, since he has a tendency to bang his fists down on his desk when calls are going well. So, that's going to be lots of fun. Tall Paul is so tall, I may just pretend that he is a wall.**
I've also discovered that Dora the Explorer taught me more Spanish that I thought. Since I've been trained for all the international plans at work, my phone is messed up and I am gated*** to answer the "press 2 for Spanish" calls. These poor people are so confused. I have "¿Necesita un traductor?" written out phonetically at my desk and then I say in my horrible accent "un momento por favor," and then I call the AT&T Language Line and pray to get one of my two favorite translators who actually have some financial vocabulary, otherwise things are very hard. They are trying to fix my phone, but until then I'm doing about 2/3 of my calls in Spanish. Dora did teach me all the numbers and most of the letters of the alphabet, so I'm good there. If anyone calls needing a backpack, I'll be set too.
Now I'm going to go reclaim the Roku and finish watching the BBC series "Sherlock." The Husband will not be pleased, as he is currently watching "Dr. Who." However, he's already watched at least 20 hours of "Dr. Who" this week, so it's my turn.
*There's a sentence I never thought that I would write.
**I did not intend for that sentence to rhyme that much.
***That's cool call center speak. Each of our extensions comes with a list of skills in the system and when it works properly, you are only supposed to get calls related to skills that you have. This reduces the amount of calls that need to be transferred and allows us to resolve the customer's issue in one call. However, it sucks when your phone is gated improperly.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...it's a secret
This is a big secret (which is why I'm putting it out on the Internet for the whole world to read, but really, I think only 4 people read my blog), so I apologize for not telling those of you who know me in real life.* The Husband and I are going to meet with an adoption attorney in the near future to see what our options are with regard to adopting another child. Regardless of what the attorney has to say, we probably won't move forward with starting the adoption process for at least another year; we just want to know what our options are. We think that we will be looking at an adoption through the county or state. Because of my mental illness, we're disqualified from an international adoption and I'm guessing that a person looking to do a private adoption probably wouldn't pick us. Although I would love to do an international adoption, they are incredibly expensive and an adoption through the state or county is much more practical for us financially.
Why adoption? I'm guessing that is a question that I will have to get used to hearing a lot. There are a lot of reasons. As the aunt to four adopted children, I think that I have a different take on adoption than others may. It's weird--I've watched my sister go through three previous adoptions and basically felt nothing and then this time when I was looking at the pictures from Haiti something moved in my heart and I thought that this is something that I really want. There is one little girl in particular and I saw her picture, which looked both happy and said at the same time and something inside me said "I need one." The idea of another child has been creeping into my mind for awhile now. For me adoption is the only reasonable option. I can't have another baby. I'm doing well, but I can't imagine coming off my medication for any length of time. Being pregnant on my medication is also not practical. I also worry about postpartum depression, which I know I had with Sweet Pea. I worry all the time about having passed my bipolar disorder to Sweet Pea and I can't knowingly do that to another child.
So, that's the news... For those that may want some specifics--we want a girl so Sweet Pea will have a sister. We could care less about race, however we want a child age 3 or under (I would like one under age 2, because I still want a baby). We are in the thinking stages of adopting a child with special needs. I am more sold on that than The Husband, but I have been thinking about this for longer. Should you talk to me in real life, don't mention this to The Husband** or my parents.***
And now to work things...
Remember back on June 15 I told you about this girl that is marginally in charge of me that I really don't like but was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt? It's official now. I don't like her. She is one of the most contrary people that I have ever met. In a recent training class she got into an argument with a guy about the flavor of Arby's curly fries. (Her position was that curly fries are flavorless--curly fries are many things, but flavorless isn't one of them.) I think that she argues for the sake of arguing. She's also just mean. During the same training class she admitted how she loves giving participants bad news, especially telling them that stuff has expired and that they can no longer sell their shares. I hate delivering bad news. In my past positions it was my responsibility to move heaven and earth for my participants. Telling them no is really hard and I can't believe that someone would enjoy ruining someone's day like that, especially when people are counting on this money. Finally, and to me the worst, this girl has talked openly in a negative way about kids with autism and down syndrome in a room full of people--I was hoping the someone with a child with one of those conditions would call her out. I was biting my tongue (almost literally) so hard at that point because her comments were so ignorant and insensitive. We aren't going to be friends, I'm never going to like her and I've decided that I don't have to try.
That's the news for now--I think about writing all the time. I just need to get better about sitting down and actually doing it.
Remember...it's a secret.
*I think that sentence might suck--the parenthetical probably doesn't help...oh well
**He would be thrilled that it's now on the Internet
***Not that any of you talk to my parents, but it's not time for them to know yet.
Why adoption? I'm guessing that is a question that I will have to get used to hearing a lot. There are a lot of reasons. As the aunt to four adopted children, I think that I have a different take on adoption than others may. It's weird--I've watched my sister go through three previous adoptions and basically felt nothing and then this time when I was looking at the pictures from Haiti something moved in my heart and I thought that this is something that I really want. There is one little girl in particular and I saw her picture, which looked both happy and said at the same time and something inside me said "I need one." The idea of another child has been creeping into my mind for awhile now. For me adoption is the only reasonable option. I can't have another baby. I'm doing well, but I can't imagine coming off my medication for any length of time. Being pregnant on my medication is also not practical. I also worry about postpartum depression, which I know I had with Sweet Pea. I worry all the time about having passed my bipolar disorder to Sweet Pea and I can't knowingly do that to another child.
So, that's the news... For those that may want some specifics--we want a girl so Sweet Pea will have a sister. We could care less about race, however we want a child age 3 or under (I would like one under age 2, because I still want a baby). We are in the thinking stages of adopting a child with special needs. I am more sold on that than The Husband, but I have been thinking about this for longer. Should you talk to me in real life, don't mention this to The Husband** or my parents.***
And now to work things...
Remember back on June 15 I told you about this girl that is marginally in charge of me that I really don't like but was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt? It's official now. I don't like her. She is one of the most contrary people that I have ever met. In a recent training class she got into an argument with a guy about the flavor of Arby's curly fries. (Her position was that curly fries are flavorless--curly fries are many things, but flavorless isn't one of them.) I think that she argues for the sake of arguing. She's also just mean. During the same training class she admitted how she loves giving participants bad news, especially telling them that stuff has expired and that they can no longer sell their shares. I hate delivering bad news. In my past positions it was my responsibility to move heaven and earth for my participants. Telling them no is really hard and I can't believe that someone would enjoy ruining someone's day like that, especially when people are counting on this money. Finally, and to me the worst, this girl has talked openly in a negative way about kids with autism and down syndrome in a room full of people--I was hoping the someone with a child with one of those conditions would call her out. I was biting my tongue (almost literally) so hard at that point because her comments were so ignorant and insensitive. We aren't going to be friends, I'm never going to like her and I've decided that I don't have to try.
That's the news for now--I think about writing all the time. I just need to get better about sitting down and actually doing it.
Remember...it's a secret.
*I think that sentence might suck--the parenthetical probably doesn't help...oh well
**He would be thrilled that it's now on the Internet
***Not that any of you talk to my parents, but it's not time for them to know yet.
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