AUTHOR: M. DATE: 7:12:00 PM ----- BODY:

I sent off the recommendation forms today to the people we asked to write letters for us. All are wonderful, and all were (or at least acted convincingly) very pleased to be asked. It does underscore the fundamental irony of all this, though: any fools can have a baby, and many do. Adoption requires lots more shoe leather. But. Jessie, who is busy working on HER first baby, talked about feeling jealous that we have someone helping to faciltate the process of preparing to become parents, while she and her husband stumble through on their own. Point well taken. My other little milestone is that I told my supervisor. I couldn't figure out when was the right time to tell her, but an agency we've been working with asked us to schedule three trainings in Seattle, San Diego, and Boise over the next 10 months, and I can't schedule past April at this point without a back-up plan. This is a woman who just took a three-month sabbatical to hang out with her kids, and who announced to the whole office today that she had to leave early to buy her son a Halloween costume. Family-friendly. She didn't disappoint. Actually, she hugged me, and spent a good ten minutes asking me about the process before we even started talking about how this affects my work. She was also so thrilled that I told her that I planned to take FMLA leave and then COME BACK to work that she seemed to hardly care about what I want my schedule to be. That went well. I have to figure out how and when to tell the rest of my co-workers - the stakes are lower but it's awfully public. Maybe I should jump on the chairs in the lobby and pump my fists. That would get the word out pretty effectively.

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