I'm trying to purge and then stage the house for sale. Last night I caught a hell of a break and my class was canceled so I was able to shop for some staging things. I got new curtains we really needed and scored a new leather sofa for $259 (a floor sample of a discontinued line originally $1,099).

Did I mention I was in school? Oh, yeah... with the relocation, I need to finish my degree NOW. So 3 of the 4 graduate classes I had left need to be taken this semester. One is only given in the fall, one is only given in person (and in the spring, I'm likely to miss too much of it either because we move or because we're traveling to scope out relocation prospects) and the third, I have special permission to take without having a job and the help of a former classmate--so I need to take it while all of that's lined up. Blech.

Cookie's motion to terminate the parental rights was acknowledged, but that was IT. I fired our lawyer yesterday. Matt and I agreed that at this point, everyone's working on reunification and our lawyer's just waiting until they actually try to send the baby home to do anything. No, thanks. We want no part of it. We can just as well stop all this nonsense and rest knowing that the court knows who we are and recognizes us as a part of the case. They have a completed ICPC agreement. So if she needs to go somewhere other than her mother, we know they know about us and we're cleared to take her. I'm going for the evaluative visits and I'll go down for court. We WILL interview another lawyer who may know more about limiting what the mother can do once the baby is back in her care (like not leaving the state she's in--again--so that the clock doesn't restart AGAIN if she relapses AGAIN). We'll see. We DID raise enough money at our last garage sale to cover the retainer. One weekend (Sat-Sun) and another Saturday made us $1,100! I hate to think of how much we originally spent on those things. Granted, there were a lot of items donated to the cause that fetched us good money, too.

Yesterday our lawyer for the baby's adoption got the papers from CPS and told us to pick a date. Her birthday is Nov. 7th. Date options were 10/22, 11/5, 11/19 and 11/20. Of course, I picked the first available date. :) Hopefully that will be it!!

My BIL gets married Sunday evening. Matt and Graham are in the wedding. The prior Sunday night, relatives flew in from Italy and one of my inlaws closest friends from high school finally lost his battle to cancer. So there was the wake on Tuesday night, more relatives coming in for the wedding on Wednesday, then today (Thursday) is the funeral. I think Friday night may be the rehearsal dinner and then the wedding Sunday night. It's a full week to say the least. Monday we have the realtors coming to update the market analyses. Thankfully, there's a high-priced house in town that just went under contract. One of our agents talked to their agent who said they didn't slash the price. Even if they did, it would've been down to what we were hoping to get for ours. And their house is assessed for $10,000 more than ours. They listed theirs for $40,000 more than we're allowed to under the terms of the relocation agreement. Cross your fingers. I'm PLOWING through staging this house. I took "before" pictures of most of it. Wish I'd taken shots of the attic because that's impressive. :)