A Home Study Nearly Up in Smoke

Trey: Whew! Hard to believe as it is, we made it through the home study. The paperwork, references, background checks, medical exams, fingerprinting, and interviews all culminated today as our case worker came to our home for what Leslie and I felt was the ultimate inspection.

Leslie: In truth, we started preparing for this visit with one of the first impulse buys of our marriage – mums for the front yard. Not much of an impulse buy for most people, but if you know my budget-minded husband, you understand.

Trey: It wasn’t the breaking of the budget that made me hesitate the most. It was more fear that a good freeze would come and the first impression our case worker would get would be dead mums in an unkempt yard.

Leslie: Well, the mums aren’t dead, and they even commented on our great landscaping. Last Monday, I started noticing things in our house that I would be mortified if I didn’t fix. You never really realize how dirty a house can get until you undertake the deep cleaning as we did. I began to fear that our house had a “smell” that we didn’t notice and all you people were too nice to tell us about.

Trey: Leslie called her mom in for reinforcements during our big cleaning day yesterday. Although she was a huge help, I did feel like I had put too much pressure on her. I don’t think she knew I was kidding when I told her I would prefer if she not use the guest bathroom once cleaned. At least that’s the impression I got when I saw her asking our neighbor to use theirs.

Leslie: She was pretty scared of Trey. She kept asking me if she had placed all the frames back on our tables correctly. I explained to her that I didn’t know, and I never knew. I live daily with the reality that I don’t know quite the angle at which the frame is tilted on the table, but I reassured her that Trey would be in shortly to correct our mistakes.

Trey: After a long day, however, we were finally done. Our house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, inside and out. I dared the adoption people to try and find a spot of dust, grim, or grease anywhere. We fought the urge to leave our perfect home to spend the night in a hotel, but we did go out for lunch and dinner as the kitchen was immaculate.

Leslie: I was just excited to eat out twice in one day. If you have seen Trey lately, you know we haven’t eaten much at all. I even put some of the leftovers in my purse for later.

Trey: We both woke up extremely early on Monday anxious for their arrival. I went to Panera for bagels (of which they ate none) and returned quickly to rerun the vacuum, clean the counters one more time, and light some candles for a nice aromatic scent. Leslie, however, felt we should blow them out prior to their arrival. The last thing we wanted them to think was that we left open flames going unattended. That would be just too irresponsible. Speaking of…I failed to mention that our preparation yesterday did include a small…or not so small…oven fire.

Leslie: Okay, I really must explain here. We have cleaned our oven before. Each time we carefully read all the instructions and followed them to a T, so I felt confident that I knew what I was doing. Trey was mowing the lawn, and I was cleaning. I took everything out of the oven, and pressed “clean.” Mom and I were scrubbing baseboards, and I noticed Mom’s face had an interesting glow. I also got that cozy feeling you get next to the fireplace. After realizing we don’t have a fireplace, I panicked. I thought, “Okay, calm down. This is what they prepare you for during all those fire safety weeks in school. STOP. DROP. AND ROLL.” As I realized my asthmatic lungs were closing on me, I considered remaining in the house to suffer the consequences because I REALLY did not want to go get Trey. He has always been a wonderful, patient husband, but I knew that this might pass even his breaking point. The fire went out, and all is well….although it may be a while before I am allowed to operate the oven independently.

Trey: Seeing we were completely ready with time to spare we had nothing to do but worry about what we had not done. This led us to the alarming thought that our case workers may not be coffee drinkers. We had no other beverages in the house! Feeling that we would risk too much by doing nothing, Leslie ran to Kroger to pick up a gallon of (the expensive non-generic) orange juice. I will point out again that they gracefully declined any orange juice. (While on this train of thought I will also point out they did not use the good hand soap we bought for the guest bathroom).

Leslie: Yes, I panicked about the orange juice. These people are my only hope for a baby right now. I would like to remind you that most people get to simply have sex for a baby. We have planted mums, cleaned our house, and bought name-brand orange juice.

Trey: Finally they arrived. I am not sure what we were expecting, but much to our chagrin they never even broke out a pair of white gloves. They didn’t notice our sparkling baseboards, they didn’t check out our perfectly straight Tupperware cabinet, nor look in our refrigerator which resembled something from an appliance showroom. If it had not been for Leslie’s quick thinking they may have even gone the whole visit without seeing the inside of our linen closet. Thank God she swung the door open to point out how organized and straight its contents were. They seemed content enough knowing the house was reasonably clean and safe. Since we are so proud of our handiwork we have tossed around the idea of putting our house on the market just so we can have an open house.

During this final interview they did question and inspect our house’s smoke detectors and whether or not we had a fire extinguisher. When we told her we kept our fire extinguisher in our bedroom closet, she suggested that we move it to the kitchen as, “That is where most house fires occur.” My goodness! She was on to us about yesterday. I don’t know which is more embarrassing. The fact that she somehow knew we almost burned down our kitchen or the fact that after that episode we still hadn’t thought of moving it to the kitchen.

Leslie: I was sure that Trey and I know each other very well, but now I can honestly say we have communicated telepathically. He said, “Don’t you dare tell her about yesterday’s fire.” And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be a little funny to tell them about the fire and what a good suggestion moving the fire extinguisher really is.” The response I got from telepathic Trey has been censored for the sake of this blog. Let’s just suffice it to say the story went untold.

Trey: I was relieved when she went on past the fire extinguisher to other questions about our home, thinking it was just a fluke. However, she then asked if Leslie and I had an emergency exit plan in case of a fire. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?! Now I knew she had seen some singe marks we had missed. We were forced to admit to her that no, we don’t have an emergency exit strategy, but we assured her we would work on that immediately. I am not anticipating this will take long as we live in small one-story house. In the words of my sister-in-law, “You can’t swing a dead cat in this place without hitting an exit door.”

Leslie: All-in-all, the visit went well. We are excited to be working with this agency, and they seem to be excited to be working with us. Most of all, we are so excited to be closer to being on the waiting list. We kept telling ourselves we would do this part as quickly as we could, and be out of God’s way so that He can work in His time. We ask that as you think of us, say a prayer for patience, strength, protection, and guidance, not just for us, but for our birthparents, and especially our child. We believe that this journey will end with the child God intends for us. He already knows our child, and we wait for our child…no matter how long that takes.

Trey: One last note…if anyone happens to be in the Murfreesboro area in the next few days, please stop by. We have plenty of gourmet bagels, name-brand orange juice, good hand soap, and a nice, clean smell.