We did neglect to mention that we took Friday the 9th of April off to run some adoption related errands. After we had breakfast at Ruby's of course (buy 1 get 1 coupon- can't let that go to waste!).
The day began with a trip to visit the Riverside Police Dept. to have the first set of LiveScan fingerprints taken. These will clear us through the Department of Justice and run a check on us through the Child Abuse Index. LiveScan is really cool: it's all done by computer (no more ink & paper) and it works pretty much the way a scanner hooked up to your home computer does. You simply place your fingers on the glass plates, the computer scans them, and then matches the individual scans of each finger to a scan of the hand done all together. Simple. Quick. Clean. Unless you happen to be us.
Seems the coppers got a new LiveScan machine, and it is damn persnickety to say the very least. My appt. was at 9:00 am, and 47 minutes and two technicians later, they still couldn't get the computer to agree that my right pinky was indeed the same finger in 2 different scans! They finally just hit the "overide" button and called it good as they were 17 min into Jeff's appt. He fared no better. 42 minutes, 3 techs, and two uniformed officers later, most of his left hand and half of his right didn't match. The "overide" button was used liberally.
That ordeal over, we trotted a few doors down to the Sheriff's to have our county records run (all good! No wants or warrants).
Then we drove swiftly behind the "Orange Curtain" to obtain some court records & copies of our marriage license.
And our last stop of the day was in Newport Beach- we were going to see "The Birdman" - Doc Andrews. The Birdman is Jeff's fault. When he started having trouble with his gallbladder in early '99, he knew what it was, but he needed to go see a doctor to get on the path to having it extracted. As luck would have it, there was a medical group in walking distance from our apt, and Doc Andrews was able to see him. He came in, introduced himself in his mile a minute East Coast accent, and asked what was wrong. Jeff told him. To which his reply was "Been around any birds lately? Can't be too careful with those bird diseases. Haven't been around any birds have you?" We came to discover that this is a standard Doc Andrews question. When I went in a year later for an ear infection, my proximity to birds was also questioned. Ditto this last December when we were both dying with the flu and made the journey to see the Doc. So we almost fell off the exam table in shock whan we told him we were there for adoption physicals and he didn't ask about the birds. Nor did he ask if we were going to expose our future child to birds. No, no; just the usual physical kinds of things: weight (not telling), temp, blood pressure, urine sample, and 3 vials of blood each to run the various required tests. WHOA! Blood?? Needles??? I don't do needles. Couldn't we just make something up?? No. Uh-oh. How about some Valium so I'm so relaxed I don't care? YES! 5 very happy little yellow pills to take the moment I get off work on Mon the 12th while Jeff drives me. Jeff just opened up a vein without a second thought. I was feeling faint watching the vials fill with his blood. Of course, I left with a prescription for happy pills, he left with samples of blood pressure medication since he was 155/115.
I'm not looking forward to Mon.
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