When it rains it pours.  For three months straight we had not a single referral.  As of tonight, for the month of January I believe we are at 6 referrals.  Tonight’s was for 2 girls, a 4 year old and a 1 1/2 year old, who needed an adoptive home for a same-day-placement – i.e., if we’d said “yes”, they’d already be here.  I was kind of surprised when Katie said we could submit our profile for it (though with questions), but then as the phone calls mounted I realized I didn’t want to answer the next one and was too scared of the prospect, so we said “no”.  Not a “no, never”, but a “no, not for a same-day placement – if you find a short-term home and wish to talk to us further we’d love to hear more about them.”  This process is not good for my mental health.  I’m thinking of taking up drinking.  Or maybe sniffing glue.

Eventually, though, the calm set in after we declined.  The boys finally cajoled Katie into leaving the dinner table and stopping chatting with Ryan, and got her to come to the play room.  I was doing dishes, and was still calming down and figured I deserved some damned Jelly Bellies, because.  I grabbed a couple, started munching on them, and then Nicky called to me.  I walked over to him, answered his question, then gave him a kiss on the cheek, and got up to go back to the dishes.  Nicky yells out, “you smell like cookies!  with frosting!  Daddy, why do you smell like cookies?”  Little snitch…  I plead ignorance and retreated to the kitchen. I heard Katie whispering to Nick and guessed what was coming.  I panicked, and since my drink was empty and there was no food out I couldn’t come up with any way out of it, so I grabbed the dish soap and drank some.  Then when Nick came over and said, “Daddy, let me smell your breath!” I let him catch a whiff of dish soap.  Possibly I burped out a bubble, I’m not sure.  He said, “huh, that’s weird.”  And then went back to playing.  Katie burst out laughing at me, and I had to go eat 4 more jelly bellies just to get the taste out of mouth, and the first one I grabbed was grapefruit which I think combines with dish soap to taste like gym socks, by which time I felt guilty so grabbed some extras and gave one to each of my little buggers (Nicholas, Dexter, and Katie) – which is the very thing I’d just drank dish soap to avoid.

So I think the moral of the story tonight is that I lose.  After which we played the game Quips before sending the boys up to bed.  Dex won.  Nic took second.  Katie took third.  I was in last.  Again, I lose.  <sigh>  On the plus side, in just 2 weeks I get some more narcotics, so maybe then in won’t hurt so much…