Have you seen that episode of Seinfeld...

when Elaine is "black-balled" by some secret medical society when she confronts her doctor about the fact that he wrote on her medical file that she is a difficult patient? You know, the one where in the end she has to draw eyebrows back on Jerry's Uncle Leo's face with a Sharpe while at some doctor's office out in the country and and it gives him a mean look? And then the doctor writes down on Leo's medical file that he is being difficult? Well, I'm feeling a bit like Elaine lately.

When I first started investigating the who/what/where/why and how of a home study I contacted two agencies. One local agency and our Church's agency. The local agency never responded, our Church agency said they couldn't help but gave me the number to an agency that mostly did just home studies. I contacted that agency and was a little troubled when they seemed to think we would have to go the whole 9 yards and do a home study, training, etc. So I went back to the county we lived in and tried to find out exactly what we needed. Since doing that I have made countless calls to local lawyers, not to mention our own lawyer, local agencies, and about every office in the county with the word "Clerk" in the title. Some were helpful, others weren't. But two things have been consistent; getting sent to voicemail only to never receive a return phone call or being told, "No I'm not the one that deals with that, you need to talk to 'This Person'."

I'm sure it is just a bunch of bureaucratic red tape that is making this difficult but even agencies and our own lawyer are slow (if ever) to respond to me. I feel like I have been "black balled" by those in the legal and agency side of adoption for some unknown reason. Perhaps because someone wrote on my adoptive parent file that I was a difficult patient? Maybe I will get a mysterious phone call in the middle of the night to confirm I am in fact Jill Preston and the spelling of my last name to confirm my own suspicions in this regard... I'll let you know if I do!