Taking a break

I finished my letter to CIS asking for a postponement of the fingerprints for g-ma and my mom. The doctors are saying that once my mom gets home (hopefully by Tuesday), she'll need to stay in for at least 4-6 weeks. I have requested that the new fingerprinting appointments be sometime after January 1st. This is really hard, because now, with my new calculations/assumptions, I may not be in Vietnam until August. That seems like almost a year away! I am VERY disappointed. I don't want to shift blame to anyone, but I wish we would have realized the severity of my mom's health weeks ago and most likely I would be preparing my dossier items instead of sitting here typing this. I want to just break down and cry, but no good would come of it. I will be spending the next two months cleaning, nesting and organizing this house, as well as working my butt off to make some money around here, since my mom will be very limited in what she can do for work. Let's home I can literally work my butt off and my thighs as well. That would be a nice little treat.

I'll 'see' you in two months, oh, and I'll be reading your blogs, hoping to hear wonderful travel news. :)

Mom's in the hospital, again

Sunday was the day from, well you know. My mom has been sick for too long and on Monday she developed a knot under the skin on her stomach (this was the first day she had been out and about and she thought she just did too much), well this 'knot' became worse and Friday evening it turned into some sort of blood blister. *WARNING THIS ENTRY GETS A LITTLE GRAPHIC* Friday evening it burst and, what I know refer to as 'mixed fluids,' came out. Saturday it wasn't too bad. We have wound care items here so I was taking care of it (I thought). But, oh dear, come Sunday, the thing burst/erupted and out of it poured cups of mixed fluids. I called 9-1-1 immediately, as this was now out of my realm of knowledge. They came (7 minutes later), admitted her into the ER, determined that she had a major skin infection, operated and cut/scraped everything out and now she is recovering in the hospital where she finally feels better after more than 7 weeks of feeling like cr@p! This was a very scary few hours, but we survived and I am so glad to see she is on the road to recovery. She has been up walking around and I have finally been sleeping, because I know she is fine. We are hoping she will be home by this weekend. Since she was too sick to get her fingerprints done and surely will not be up to it by Saturday (the last day of my appointment) I will be sending CIS a letter requesting a rescheduling. She will most likely not be able to leave the house for 3 weeks or more so sometime in mid December should be good. I think I am official okay with the additional delays, mainly because I am confident it will all work out in the long run. Maybe this gives my agency some more time to work out any kinks with arranging hotel stays and all the other important things, maybe this gives the US government some more time to hire extra staff in VN to expedite the wait families are going through, maybe my mild mannered, calm child is still groaning inside it's 'far away mommy,' maybe the funding to refinance my home will come through in November since it fell through the second to last day of October, maybe I will be able to save more moolah to really enjoy myself in VN and truly experience the country without feeling like I need to save money in my child's birth country, maybe, maybe, maybe. Anyway, I feel complete with the turn this has taken. Maybe I'm just relieved that my mom is really okay and not much matters after that.

As long as I have a visual of who my child is by Spring '07 I would be a happy lady. Maybe I'll finally get this house clean. Probably not, but maybe. :)