"Tell your children of Him, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation." Joel 1:3

Monday, February 22, 2010

Can I cry now?

I went to work on Saturday and got home around 1:30. Jason had left before noon for a work meeting so the boys were home for a little while on their own. I walked in the door and Tyler met me in the foyer with a scared look on his face asking, "Did you save that Adoption paper you were writing?" My stomach sank immediately because I knew the answer was one that would mean that I would soon be RE-Doing 2 weeks of work. Part of our adoption home study is something called our family guidelines. It's a compilation of questions about you, your family, your community, your extended family, your schools, your future, your plans for the child you're adopting, etc, etc, etc....It goes on for 4 pages. All questions that you are expected to answer and put together in essay form. Our social worker told us that the average length of the ones people send back are between 10 and 14 pages long.
We received it the last part of December and were really hoping to have it done by the time we went on our cruise, but that just didn't happen. So for the past 2 weeks, we've been taking the chances we have to get it done so we can hand it in and be done with everything we need to complete this first major step in our journey. Since getting our new computer, we haven't had anything other than Notepad to write things like this. When we've used it for the boys' papers, it's been funny in that once we save it, it can't be edited when we open it back up. It's because of this that I was just keeping the page open and leaving it at the bottom of the computer page. Dumb, I know. Trust me, as mad as I was at Tyler for messing with my stuff....I was really more mad at myself for being so stupid.
So, fast forward back to Saturday....3 minutes before I got home....Tyler decided he was going to show Timmy something on the computer (even after getting strict instructions by dad to not touch the computer while we were away) and he pulled up the tab for notepad. When he went to X out of it, it asked if he wanted to save it. Hmmmm....let's see....should I save these 10 pages that mom and dad have been working on.....or should I just ASSUME it's already saved.....Hmmm....I'll take the dangerous route and press DON"T SAVE. With one stroke of one wrong key, it was gone. No recycling bin, no restore, nothing was getting it back. Just 2 more weeks of work on our part will retrieve it. I was too mad to even cry about it. Tyler was very sorry, I know this...but if he hadn't been on the computer (like he was told) and had he not been messing with something that wasn't his, this would not have happened. Course, if I had been smart enough to even just done a copy and paste into an email draft.....something just in case.....this wouldn't have happened either. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter HOW it happened. It did. And now we're back to square one with our essay. UGH!