Doing my happy Tuesday dance!

I got an email today that made me happy! Alexander and I sent all of the paperwork to the attorney last week and today the attorney emailed me to tell us that it's all together and has been sent off to the US Immigration Service! Wheee hoooo!!

I have renew empathy for those who choose to come to the US illegally. I can understand why they do. I mean, getting away from their own poverty is one thing but the Immigration Services do not make it easy or very affordable to do it legally. There is SO MUCH INFORMATION that had to be gathered and verified and whatnot that had to be submitted with the application for Alex's visa. Then there are the filing free. Nearly $800 for just this first step and more to come as Alex applies for Permanent Residency.

Still, it's done for now and now we wait. This is the closest we've been yet and it feels good to know that this is all well on it's way now!!!

*you can't see me but I really am doing a happy dance here*

Bringing work home...

I broke my Numero Uno Cardinal Rule of Work on Friday. I brought some work home with me. ACK! With a Capital ACK! I vowed a long time ago NEVER to tote paperwork home from the office. I learned the lesson the hard way when I was younger, far more eager and a good deal more naive than I am now. I used to be "Social Worker" 24/7/365 and it damn near killed me. I got so burned out in such a short time that I was on the verge of needing medication. I realized then that I was NOT cut out to be Wonder Woman and no matter how hot she was in her superhero suit and how cool that invisible plane was I did NOT want to be her. I had to get my priorities straight and it wasn't easy.



So here I am again, staring at an enormous pile of care plans and decision forms which require my signature. They're the visual reminder of how much got left undone while I was off for three weeks. I tried to get them signed before the end of the day Friday but it was impossible. So, I have them here, hogging up one full table, needing my attention. Which I will give them. Just this one time.

In the meantime, while I writing this, my work cell phone rang. Work in creeping into this weekend! ACK again! Head's will roll on Monday to be sure!!

Deadlines, deadlines everywhere...

Since changing to a new funding source over a year ago there has been a significant increase in the amount of paperwork we have to do here now. And, of course, someone in an office somewhere much higher up than we has decided that new paperwork must mean new deadlines. Given that the type of paperwork we do seems to constantly be under revision and rewrites it's virtually impossible to keep up. Then when we are audited we are inevitably slammed on not meeting our deadlines. Madness!!

One of the new forms we have to do is to send out a notice of a denied service. Apparently just talking it over with the person isn't enough. We have to talk it over, put it in writing, send that to an administrator, who sends it up the food chain and it eventually gets signed and sent out to the person being denied. That one piece of paper has to be seen by at least four people before the person it's intended for ever actually gets it. And all of this has to be done within 14 days of original request so if any one of those 4 people hangs onto it for any reason the original sender is out of compliance. Then we, after talk again to the person being denied to let them know no decision has been made, have to start all over again with another written denial and up the chain it goes. I swear this makes no sense to me but I realized a few months ago that if I try to use common sense in any of this I just end up making myself crazy. What's crazier is that more than once in all of these procedures we have actually had to start over because someone responsible for form revision has revised the form in the middle of all this and we can't use the old form if there's a new form..... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

It seems that in this age of faster electronics and communication media at our fingertips the world of social work keeps taking one step forward and two steps back.

Let's talk immigration....

Crap! I went online to start to print out the immigration forms Alex and I will need in order to get him over here permanently. I think I blew a gasket in my printer! Haha! Isn't there some "reduction of paperwork act"? There are about 10 separate forms to fill out. Each one has an at least 10 page instruction booklet that also needed to be printed out. Then there are additional pages we need that have information that we will need to know when we file these puppies. I also ran across some online legal advice sites and I'm thinking it might not be a bad idea to pay someone to do this for us. This seems like it has an enormous margin for error and if we screw up just one little thing, game over. We won't get approval and we're back at the starting point again. I don't know...I'll have to really read through all of this stuff THOROUGHLY before we make that decision.

But it is exciting!! We have plans, at last!! And now just have to make them happen!!!