This Love Thursday is actually about all of the events that unfolded yesterday and how my adopted stepson came to the rescue in the midst of what can only be summed up as a really crappy day! We are traveling out of the country at the end of the year, and being the first big trip out of the US for all of us, none of us are yet among the elite class of citizens whom own their very own passports.

Absolutely no part of the process of obtaining these little travel documents adorned with our pictures on them has been easy, nor has it been fun. I have had to send away for multiple copies of our birth certificates, I have had to take online identity quizzes in order to get some of them, and fax multiple copies of my driver’s license in order to obtain mine, which by the way still has not happened since the fax of my license isn’t coming out clear enough for the great state of New Jersey to read, regardless of how large I make it. Luckily though, I do have my original birth certificate, which I can send off, I was just hoping to be able to keep that one and send off a certified copy.

We have had to take, and then retake two sets of passport pictures, both my husband’s and my adopted stepson’s pictures came out with more than the legal amount of yellow in the picture. Some of us stood by dumbfounded at how one could go twenty six years through life oblivious to the fact that there was a legal limit on yellow, and picturing a canary trying to get a passport, while roaming the isles of CVS for yet another twenty minutes waiting on yellow legal pictures.

Finally with all of our documents in hand, we trotted off to the post office early one Saturday afternoon, okay almost all of our documents in hand, halfway there we had to turn around because I forgot the completely non-yellow passport pictures. So we stand in line, finally make our way up to the counter, only to have to woman standing behind it, and when I say standing I mean leaning heavily on it keeping securely grounded while resting her head on the side of her fist, tell us that we should have made an appointment. Appointment? Post Office? Never would have guessed. I looked around at the three other people being served by the other, much friendlier postal workers, and the three in line waiting their turns, as this woman begins to explain that it would have to be ‘dead’ in the office for her to do passports. Apparently her view of ‘dead’ and my view of ‘dead’ did not match, as I saw three people waiting to be served by the three other tellers there was not busy for a post office, she however saw only three more hours till the end of her shift, which she pointed out, clock and all, and no real desire to fill any of that time in with passport work.

Defeated and disgruntled we returned home, determined to call during the week and make an appointment for the following Saturday. I called the office on Wednesday; only to have the same clerk, with all of her enthusiasm for her work, explain in great detail how her regular days are only Monday through Friday. Saturday is overtime, overtime. She said it twice, so I will put it twice here, I am assuming there is a great importance to this overtime that she speaks of. She had not yet decided if she really wanted to work on Saturday or not yet, however if I wanted to call back later on in the week, she might know. Silly me thought that Wednesday kind of already was, ‘later on in the week.’

I got the brilliant idea to just take the kids up that day during the posted hours of weekday passport application processing times, and my husband could just take his information to work with him the following day and mail his off from a different post office. So we set out with all of our documentation, and again when I say ‘all’ I mean we had to turn around after arriving at the post office because I forgot my check book, and then go back to the post office and get in line. We make our way up to the front of the counter, only to have the much friendlier clerk tell us that we stood in the wrong line, and to go stand in front of the door that the lovely brown haired woman just entered. Great, so we stood in line for nothing, and now someone has just entered where we need to be.

The lovely brown haired lady was renewing her passport, so she went rather fast, and once she exited the little glass room, we walked in and sat down across from our now favorite post office clerk. I separated all of our applications and began pulling out everyone’s birth certificates, when she announced “okay, where’s dad?” I told her he was working, and can only get his done on Saturday, or in the state that he works in (he has quite a long commute.) And she then told me that he had to be present in order for the kids to get their passports. So at this point, in case you haven’t guessed it yet, I am pretty darn mad, in fact mad isn’t the word I would really use to describe it, it’s just a nicer word to use. We all have to be together in order to get the whole thing done; yet she is incapable of making a commitment of working on Saturday, as early in the week as Wednesday. I packed up my paperwork and left, officially throwing in the towel on our local Post Office...

Click HERE for Part Two of this story


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