The Health Inspector Cometh

Today is our last hurdle before our foster care papers are submitted to the agency and county: a visit from the county health inspector.

[cue ominous music] Duhn duh, duhhhhhh!

We’ve been assured by other foster parents that it’s an easy visit to check that it’s generally clean, the refrigerator is cold enough, and that the water doesn’t run scalding hot. The fridge was 36-37, there was ice in the freezer, and our hottest faucet (the kitchen) was 105 when I tested everything this morning.

He said it only takes 15 minutes, so it can’t be all that thorough looking in every nook and cranny, but it’s a little intimidating. He could have come today but it was laundry day, so we didn’t think that was the best presentation we could offer… or anywhere close. Laundry is one of those things that gets worse before it gets better, you know?

We have been looking forward to this point for so many months, it’s almost surreal.

Then after work

We have our friends Jim and Denise Fahr coming over to Tampa/Brandon while they are with Denise’s parents at their time-share about an hour away on the west side of Orlando/Disneyworld. The CF Wives are meeting at Olive Garden for dinner and invited Denise along. The rules are that you 1) have to be a wife 2) of a CFer to join the Facebook group. They share all kinds of info, stories, and trials – and I’m sure some triumphs along the way.

Jim and I are both Mac-addicts, so we’ll hit up the Apple Store at the mall after the four of us have some time together. Jim had his double-lung transplant shortly after I started this site – let’s see, it was May of 2010. Ever since he was on the mend and back to being himself, we struck up a friendship of mutual respect for being driven, hard-working dudes who are crazy about their wife. We are different in as many ways as we are the same, but we can’t escape the fact that we both have late-stage CF and he’s already jumped the creek to the other side with new airbags. I’m really looking forward to finally meeting him and spending a couple of hours together.

This will be the first time either Beautiful or I will meet someone who’s crossed the transplant bridge and is living life large once again. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have my occasional (if not daily) fantasies of life with new airbags, but I have to jolt myself – sometimes the jolt comes from Beautiful – back into the present with what I have now: stability, familiarity, and all-original equipment that we don’t need to convince my body to not attack.

We’ll see how much fantasizing I do with Jim tomorrow.

Yes, I wrote that sentence intentionally and find it too funny to delete. Enjoy it.