Here’s the mini-round up:

Adoption:

It’s been about 18 months since I started my adoption journey, and about 8 months since I was approved. Child 3 and Child 4’s social workers both said no to me in the end (I just found out today about both).

Child 3 they are moving ahead with another, better match, and Child 4’s Social Workers decided that they wanted 2 parents for him so won’t consider my profile (so in their case it is specifically because I am single).

So round we go again on the merry go round.

I’ve tentatively asked my SW to investigate a possible option for another child (Child 5) – I am not sure they would pick me as it’s not an ethnic match (meaning the child and I have different skin colour and ethnic heritage), so I have asked her to find out if they would consider me. I’m going away for 2 weeks on a work trip and the database is down at the moment anyway, so I have asked her to just gently find out on my behalf while I’m away. Not getting hopes up at all, but we’ll see.

Meanwhile more and more couples I know are getting approved and matched almost instantly. I’m not bitter, I swear.

House:

Got prematurely excited about my upcoming re-mortgage, as I think I will finally be able to borrow enough to buy out the remaining shares of my house so that I am the official full owner of my beloved and quirky little casa. We found a bank that could just stretch to the amount required, but now things have slowed down considerably – their automated valuation of my house came up over £100,000 less than it’s been actually valued at, which is ridiculous as we have sent them the formal valuation, and their underwriter keeps claiming he needs to see some shared ownership paperwork that doesn’t exist (I’ve sent him what I have but he keeps asking for some other mystical papers I just don’t have).

It’s entirely possible it will all fall through but my lovely Mortgage Adviser is on it and doing his best (he’s DEFINITELY getting a new Thank-You Stapler when this is done). One upside is that when I first bought my house back in 2011, the Connells real estate fees included lifetime mortgage advice, and it has been amazing – I haven’t had to pay for any of my re-mortgages so far (this will be my 4th mortgage on the house since 2011). And they work ever so hard for literally none of my money (I gather the bank pays them commission though).

Flying:

My recent work and pleasure trips have made me very conscious of my carbon emissions – I have been busy attempting to educate myself so there is a LONG post coming up all about that – stay tuned!

Also my upcoming work trip to Addis Ababa, via Ethiopian Airways did make me feel slightly jittery about flying for the first time. I’m generally a pretty chilled traveller, but the recent crash was awful, and seems to have really rocked the aid sector (At least 45 of the 149 passengers were aid and development workers, so a huge number of people in my network have lost someone they knew). I don’t think I knew anyone personally (though I haven’t seen the full list of names) and no-one from my organisation was on the flight, but it’s still such a terrible tragedy.

What helps is knowing that the most likely cause was the plane model (Boeing 737-Max 8), which has now been grounded around the world, making it very unlikely to be an issue. Also, as one friend pointed out, they say that the statistically safest time to fly with a particular airline is immediately after they’ve just had a crash (but that gets me thinking – who are these “they” that say these things? Some airlines are blacklisted precisely because they crash, and are more likely to keep on crashing!).

Either way, it’s possible I may need to deploy a little extra gin to calm the nerves before take-off just in case…