Cupcakes, Beans & Rice: Layering on the Stress

Like many people, I seem to stack my stressors . . .

You know how they say that your should avoid too many major things at once?
(wedding, relocating, buying a home, starting a new job, etc.)
Well, I'm not a good listener, apparently.

While that little ticker up top says it's been 2 years, 7 months, blah, blah, blah
since our referral to adopt Dimitry,
(which is the date we were told "yes," specifically for Dimitry)
the 3rd anniversary of being called to adopt has now passed.

We continue to wait for word on his passport --
hearing other families report that they received their child's passport in the " 7-10 day period" quoted to them --
we just passed the 5 week waiting milestone.
We are so very close to being done with this red tape and actually having our son home,
but just haven't caught a break yet.

So, in the meantime . . .
we've decided to finish our basement (in record time), put our house on the market,
have surgery on my hip (making me non-weight bearing for 4 weeks, then months of PT),
accept a job in Colorado (that I start after the new year),
start shopping for homes online, while planning to relocate after the holidays,
where we will enroll our 3 children in a new school,
all while our puppy (10.5 years old) has recently become disabled,
which is absolutely breaking my heart.

Not a good time to try a new medication for hip pain,
which causes me to have weird dreams all night, that roll on like a movie,
leaving me tired in the morning . . .
and still hurting.
Not a good time for the pharmacy to run out of a regular medication,
leaving me without it for 3 days . . .

And, on top of all that, I'm having deja vu' . . .

Two months before I gave birth to my oldest child,
our first "child," George (a tabby cat),
became inexplicably and seriously ill.
Without any other signs of illness,
he began losing weight rapidly and went into multi-system organ failure.
One day, he seemed fine,
then two weeks later, he died.
The vet could not determine an exact cause of illness -
feline leukemia negative, potentially a form of acquired immunodeficiency?

Then Grant came along,

our sweet, sweet baby boy.