You would think that by our having been involved in international adoptions since Fall of 2006 that we would be well-versed in handling adoption frustration, well we're not.
Yesterday, I received an e-mail from our social worker that it will be another 3 weeks at least before she updates our homestudy for Ethiopia. The only form that she needed in order to do the update was our 2007 tax returns, so I faxed those to her on May 6th. Rachel Ward was our homestudy provider before she moved to Ethiopia, and she did an update for Ukraine in January in just under 1 week (our actual homestudy itself with all the visits only took 3 weeks). Don't get me wrong, our new provider who took Rachel's place is very sweet and I'm sure she's busy, but 3 more weeks?! This is really going to slow down our dossier preparation because we cannot request a country switch with USCIS until we have the updated homestudy. Hopefully she is going to move faster than she anticipates and we'll be pleasantly surprised when the work is completed in record time (that's my prayer anyway). I'm really glad that Rachel is doing such wonderful work at the transitional home, however we sure do miss her in Tennessee!
This morning, we went to our local State Farm office for updated info on our life insurance policy, and we ran into another problem - the agent's office personnel didn't understand the importance of a name change after marriage as well as how to notarize documents. We have bee
n married for 5 1/2 years and promptly submitted my name change information upon our marriage. We have never received any documentation with my name on it because the Jason is the main policy holder, well now that we need proof of coverage for the dossier it was revealed that the policy has never been changed. The secretary kept insisting that it shouldn't matter that the policy we have hasn't been updated. She even gave me a business card "in case the Ethiopians have any questions" (her words exactly). To top it off, we were given the runaround about obtaining a new policy, so we at least needed a print-out with all the life insurance info. Because I knew she was a notary (saw the certificate on the wall) and knew that the agent was in the office (he had already greeted us), I requested that the agent sign the document and she notarize it. Get this, she signed the agent's name on her own then wrote "signed by" and notarized her own signature! Okay, I know that not everyone is well versed on the rules and regulations of being a notary, but doesn't common sense tell you that you don't certify your own signature?! I attempted (very nicely even though I was astounded at her ignorance) to explain to her why this wasn't going to work. By this time, the agent had already left the office and was of no help to us, so I still have to deal with this lady again next week! 
