in the mail

i had my documents notarized on friday. i was spared the awkwardness of the anonymous notary by learning that one of my very dearest friends at work is a notary public and was fully prepared to take care of this issue right there at her desk. it was nice. i got the doc notarized and it offered me the opportunity to invite her into conversation about the fact that i am doing this. she is one of three or four colleagues i will talk to about doing this, so it was very cool that her services were available to me and the door was so smoothly and conveniently opened to the dialogue.

once the documents were signed and notarized, all i had to do was place them in an envelope and find the address. i did those two things. then i got a little bit freaked out. i spent friday evening at my friend D's house and, naturally, this topic came up in conversation. it does tend to dominate my thoughts, so when i am in a room with someone who feels safe enough and interested, i will take the opportunity to discuss all the crazy ideas that are bouncing around in my head. we talked about a million different possibilities that night. and about 1/3 of the things we discussed resulted in me saying, "hmmm, maybe i don't want to do this...." but i know that is just part of the 'letting go of the wonder' part of this process. i very much DO want to do this.

and this is a good thing, because the proverbial ball is, in fact, rolling in this search game. we went to the post office today and printed some postage for my little life-altering mail parcel. then i became completely overwhelmed by the need to ritualize the event in order to make it perfect (see: Second Impression references to shelly's lifelong need to ritualize) and i simply had to walk away from the situation. it is a letter going into a mailbox, for pete's sake, there really is no way to make that any more or less "correct." so i handed the envelope to alicia and said, "you are going to have to do this part." she smiled at me lovingly and with a smidge of excitement and dropped it in the slot.

now i guess i wait to hear from a social worker. what an odd thing for me to be waiting for...