Dossier Queen

After officially contracting with our international agency, which has offices in NC & SC, and meeting by phone with the intake counselor, it was finally time to begin working with the Guatemala team: the Nancys. One, a native Spanish speaker, was the program director and communicated with the lawyers and facilitators in Guatemala. The other one was the case manager and dealt with us families and supervised our dossier preparation. And let me just tell you, they are both fantastic, but the latter Nancy was a gift sent to me directly from God. I can be a little high-strung (several of you just fell out of your chairs laughing at this understatement), and she could handle me effortlessly. It was like she had caller ID, could see it was me and would give herself a pep talk before pulling on the white gloves and effortlessly handling me. She had the amazing ability to talk me down without it ever feeling patronizing. Dang she is good. She gave me a valuable piece of advice:

Emily, there are lots of times when the paperwork will not be in your hands, and there will be nothing you can do. So when that paperwork is in your hands, do everything you can do. Be efficient; don't sabotage yourself.

Ok, that is of course slightly paraphrased, but the message is there. And you are probably saying what person in her right mind who wants a baby SO BADLY would sabotage her own paperwork? But I have seen it happen with my own eyes (not me). So honey, I took her advice 100% to heart. Not to mention that as I've previously told you I was all about checking off those steps. So when they gave me access to the online dossier planner, I was like an Olympic runner! I was out of the blocks in no time!

At this point in the story we are into July 2005. And you should know that with very few exceptions, my family has gone to Panama City Beach, FL, in July every year of my life. This year was one of those exceptions. My younger brother was starting his freshman year at USMA the following month, and he had already had to report to boot camp in NY the previous month. Due to several factors surrounding him leaving, we decided not to go on vacation that year. But I took the entire week off anyway and devoted the entire week to gathering documents as part of the dossier. There is only so much you can do on your lunch hour when you work in one town and live in another. When I finished with all of the parts of the dossier that I could control, I proudly sent it to my Nancy. And then she rewarded me with the following:

I think that is the fastest I've ever seen a dossier put together.

Music to my competitive and formerly Type A ears. Aaah, it still makes me puff out my chest and smile. The only remaining piece was the 171-H that had to come from USCIS...the aforementioned bitch slap will be coming up soon.