Compiling a dossier for an international adoption takes a lot of time, a lot of attention to detail, and a lot of patience (especially since several of the items involve waiting on government entities).

A new friend of mine has hit just this stage.  It seems overwhelming at first.  There’s a long list, and the very first item is a homestudy report which comes with a separate but similar checklist all its own.  And then every document must be notarized, authenticated by the county in which that notary holds her/his license, and then apostilled by the state in which that county is located.  So some people are looking at a whole bunch of notaries, multiple counties, and several states in order to compile their one family dossier.

Here’s my method of keeping the madness to a minimum. Read the rest of this entry

I tuned into BBC News this evening, since I figured I could catch up on world news while finishing up some mindless work I needed to do.  And there it was – video of flooding in El Salvador.  We see it all the time: drought in Ethiopia, typhoons in Indonesia.  It’s easy to become numb to the natural and human-inflicted disasters of our world.  Till something becomes personal for some reason. Read the rest of this entry