Timeline, Part 3 - Home study #1... and supper.

Part 3

Oct. 13^th, had our first home study with Angela.

So the night of Wednesday Oct. 13^th,  rolls around… okay, let’s be honest,  it came rushing up on us like a freight train to couple of unsuspecting teens smoochin’ on the railroad tracks. We have no idea what to expect with a home study. We’ve heard stories about social workers going through your cabinets, drawers, and whatever else you could find. We’re trying to clean things in the house that hadn’t been cleaned since we built it along with other panicked induced activities.

After work, I find myself making a recipe Lesley found in the Sunday paper; polenta-sausage lasagna. If you’ve never “worked” with polenta, it’s kind of odd. It comes in a tube that immediately reminded me of braunschweiger. 

Now don’t play stupid!  You all know (and probably LOVE) that delicious German liver-based treat of a processed meat. The tube looked like that of a braunschweiger tube, but whereas braunschweiger looks like a spread-able hot dog, polenta looks more like a grainy cheese and is a little less, uh… spread-able. However, having said that, I suspect that a person driven on spreading it could make it work without too laborious of an effort.

I’m drifting… 

I read the instructions as I usually do, which is to say that I skimmed part of them and then proceed to cook. You see, I don’t care much for following recipes.  Rather, I read them quickly and use them as a bit of a roadmap, making alterations as I see fit.  So I get it all made up, incorrectly, stick it in the oven and THEN after about 8 – 10 minutes of cooking, I decide to look and see how long it’s supposed to cook.  Turns out that you’re supposed to cover it first, and cook it for 20 minutes, then 10 additional minutes uncovered. 

Whoops. 

So we’re in for a little more cooking time that I counted on when I put it in the oven at 5:25.  Problem is, the home study is at 6:30 and we know for a fact that we’re going to have a wrestling match with Robby in an effort to get him to eat this “stuff” called polenta. 

At about 6:05, we sit down for dinner and start eating what was an acceptable dish. Think about it though, it has sausage, mmmm...  sausage...   and cheese on it too, so how bad could it really be?  Seriously, you could put a piece of old carpet down in a greased pan and add tomato sauce, sausage and cheese to it and you’re going to have yourself, at minimum, a decent supper.

So after the inevitable wrestling match, we get the kitchen cleaned up and are ready for Angela.  Good thing too because it was 6:27 and she was pulling off of the street and into our driveway.

I don’t know what I was expecting in a social worker, perhaps Tyne Daly’s Maxine character on Judging Amy (look it up!), but Angela wasn’t it… in a good way!  She was very pleasant, easy to talk to, and never seemed to be fishing for answers.  I never once felt uncomfortable around her and in fact, she’s someone who I would gladly invite into our home outside of the adoption proceedings.

We sat around the table while she asked us various questions. “Us” is Molly, Robby, Mom & Dad.  Molly was excused early as she will be moving out of our house in November. Robby got to do him some talkin’ and handled it like a champ!  He was cute with the exception of when he told Angela that he had a question.  She said, “Go ahead and ask.”.  He did.  His question was, and I quote, “When are you gonna be leaving?”. He wanted to play football with dad and by golly, she was cuttin’ into his time before bed!

We answered a variety of questions; how do we handle conflict, how much time do we plan to take off after we bring little Beautiful back home?  Where will little Beautiful sleep? Is Robby going to China with us? What are the day-care plans after they’re able to attend? Do we have family support near by? Suppers?  Clean underwear? Job situations and so on.

We also got to ask a few questions too, so that was good. It was good to hear answers from somebody with Angela's experience. One more feather in the cap of our learnin'.

Overall, an interesting night and one more step in the right direction.