Reading is Essential

There is this little rumor going around that single women may no longer be able to adopt from Ethiopia so many of us (currently in process of adopting) are frantically trying to finish paperwork so we can be grandfathered in "just in case." So over the weekend I was going through my Gladney application pulling together all of my paperwork. I said to myself I wanted to have my application submitted by the middle of September. In reviewing my application I had a few questions so I shot off a quick email to my case manager. I thought I was doing something...you know being proactive because my home study was in a few days (by the way it is TODAY)! Oh...Gladney was great and quick to respond they even called at my request however they asked me: "Tami what are you doing?" I said: "What do you mean? I'm trying to get all of my paperwork done so when my home study is complete I can send everything with my application." She laughed and said "No. You should have sent in your application first, then we give you approval for the home study."

OOOPPPPSSSS! Well the way the checklist looked to me... I guess it is only a checklist and it was not meant to be the end all. I'll have to remember that for the rest of this process. Note to self: Read more paper or at least browse for important points! Oh, back to my conversation with my case manager:

"Tami did you read your emails?"
HUHH????
"Tami did you get your emails?"
HUHHHHH????
"Tami are you there?"
HUHHHH???

No, it wasn't that bad but that is what it felt like. I felt like I was back in third grade when I knew I did something really bad and I had no good excuse. I could have said...well, I've been building a new company and one of my clients was pretty unhappy or heck the dog ate it but at the end of the day I just didn't read it. I said early on in this process I knew the hardest part was going to be reading all of the papers because I never read manuals! When I was in business school I didn't learn how to use my business calculator until the end of the semester. Why? Because I didn't read the manual of course! I bet that B would have turned to an A if I fully utilized the functionality of the calculator. Oh well. It's a good thing I don't have to read too many manuals in my line of work! LOL As far as the rest of this process...Just pray for me! The moral of this story is: Reading is Essential!