I have become comfortably numb

Oh, man...I inhaled. Yesterday, I said I wasn't going to let all the Reefer-al Madness get to me, but it did. Here's the deal - the referral rumor mill is churning out some awful news. Word on the street/adoption boards is that the CCAA will send out referrals soon - probably next week - for families logged in as of May 30 - possibly May 31. For those of you keeping score, that's a whopping 5 or 6 days! On February 27, they sent referrals to families logged in as of May 25. One month later, they've managed five days - rather, three business days.

There are a couple of rumored reasons for this: the CCAA logged in three times as many dossiers in May 2005 than a normal month - and that May 25-31 alone has the equivalent of one month's worth of dossiers. Other sources indicate that the CCAA spent March meticulously reviewing the files to be sure the babies were legitimately abandoned or orphaned - which left less time for matching. Add those together and you've got one heck of a slowdown. Which brings us to this week.

Yesterday, I read Spain was being told May 30, so I steeled my heart and prepared for the worst - which seems to be the norm nowadays. As a result, when the rumors started flying today, I wasn't as devastated as I could have been, thought I would be, think I should be.

Honestly, the wait isn't the issue with me any longer. It's what I do - I wait. My hands are tied, so wringing them isn't going to do a dang thing. The issue with me is that I wish the CCAA would give us a clue. As Dr. Evil said in Austin Powers, "throw me a frickin' bone, people."

The Rumor Queen said it perfectly: "I think they (the CCAA) are being horribly rude in not giving some kind of timeframe right now. No, they do not owe it to us, but it would still be common courtesy, I think. If the CCAA could have posted three months ago 'April and May were very large months, and we'd like to prepare you that it could possibly take three months to get through each month. June and subsequent months were a bit smaller so we hope to be able to go back to half months when we get to them' - then we'd be able to tell our places of employment something, instead of 'we could travel anytime between August of this year and February of next year.. or maybe later, I don't know'. Especially when we originally told them it would probably be sometime in May or June when we travelled. It is kind of important to let our employers know when we'll be taking an extended period of time off - they need to be able to make plans. As I said, common courtesy."

Now that I've inhaled...I'm trying to exhale.