Skiver

I don't normally blog from work - no idea why as I do almost every other conceivable timewasting internetty thing at work - but there is 1/2 an hour to go till our end of term social and I Cannot Be Rsed to do any more work. So there.

We finished our foster care course on Tuesday and I have mixed feelings. I was kind of left wanting more, but it will be nice to get a bit of time back (it seems to have rushed by, but to have become part of our lives) and I don't know where we go from here. They are supposed to be contacting us in the next week to tell us who will be our social worker, and I was slightly relieved to hear it won't necessarily be the person who came to visit us at home - she was OK, but the two who did the course seemed a bit more open. But it's very unlikely we'd be able to finish the whole of the home study before we go away.

Mr Spouse thinks I'm being overoptimistic, and that they'll want us to wait till we come back to start, but I am thinking I should try and persuade them that it would be better to start now at least or we'll have even longer between the course and the home study (like 10-12 months instead of 7-8 in the middle). I did (I think I mentioned) apply for another job earlier in the month but haven't heard yet about it and heard on the grapevine someone much more attractive than me applied for it so am assuming at least that we'll be coming back here, not moving elsewhere on our return.

But even being pretty certain we'll be in the area and available for approval as foster carers, it still feels like we've set ourselves back with this - we won't be approved for at least another year, more like 18 months, and our personal timetable was to think about stopping trying to get pregnant and going all out for adoption at the earliest by this September and the latest next September. It looks like we won't even be approved as foster carers then. Which is depressing.

In other news, small overseas baby comes home to my colleague in about a month - very exciting. You have no idea (well, some of you do, but probably you don't) how difficult it is to find an adoption-friendly baby card in the UK. Not one with prams or "the birth of your baby" obviously, but many others are out for a variety of reasons. I finally found one with "Brand new Mummy and Daddy" on it which is a bit twee, but much more appropriate. The Twins ones were also all very twee. I'm making progress on a pile of knitting for all these babies, including the post-recurrent-pregnancy-loss-in-her-40s baby that was born last month - the hierarchy seems to be:

Baby after infertility - proper knitted garment
Singleton with no problems - hat
Twins after infertility - hats
Twins with no problems - bootees and definitely at the bottom of the pile.

Applications will be received and dealt with in the proper order. But two jackets nearly finished and two sets of bootees queued up means you could be waiting some time. Though if you are also waiting some time for your child, perhaps that will suit.

(PS Just had a knock on my door and my supervisor came in with a short but pleasant request. Very glad I had switched to my email as he read over my shoulder a pithy email from Mr Spouse, instead of this post...)