Passports! About a month ago, we went to the post office to obtain our passports for our trip to Germany this summer. Passports qualify as a first for everyone but me, and mine is so old that the picture in it is of me with braces!
Warning: Really long post with no pictures ahead!Now, I had all the necessary paperwork filled out and we even stayed up late the night before printing out 2x2 pictures of everyone to use for the passports. When we walked into the post office, we had a scheduled appointment and were hoping that we would be done within 45 minutes so we could get Isaac to his soccer game. We did plan ahead and bring 2 cars so that Matt could leave with Isaac if we weren’t quite done yet. We also fully prepared ourselves for how expensive this would be: about $425 for all five of us! And we were planning to use our United Airlines visa card so that we could rack up some more miles to use toward our plane tickets. I mean, we were prepared!
So, when we walked in and the very gruff postal worker informed us that our pictures were unacceptable and that they would have to take pictures of each of us for an additional $75, I was moderately irritated. THEN, she said that we couldn't use a credit card or a debit card; we had to write checks. Not just one check but three
separate checks for
each person with a total of
fifteen checks! SO, since I did not have my checkbook, I told her that I would have to run home to get that. Apparently while I was gone, Daphne was having some sort of meltdown and was refusing to have her picture taken. We asked her to go ahead and get Matt and Isaac’s passports all taken care of so that they could leave. I glanced at the clock and noticed we had about fifteen minutes to spare.
So, if you can just picture the scene: Me, irritated that all our careful preparation was in vain, Isaac bouncing a soccer ball around, Daphne whining and crying and refusing to be photographed, Tori fussing from no nap and Matt up to his neck in all of it! So as she is filling out our paperwork, I ask her how she is going to get a picture of the baby in front of the white background which starts about waist high. She proceeds to pull out this rickety chair with wooden arms and place an old wooden plank across the arms. She pats the top of the plank as if it is a comfy, inviting bed and says, “Go ahead and set her up here so she can get used to it.” I, of course, look at her as if she is insane, and say, “She’s not going to sit up there!” Irritable postal worker replies, “Can’t she sit by herself?”
“ Um, yes, but she’s not a trained dog. I can’t just say “ Sit here and don’t move.” She’s a baby! She’ll crawl right off if she doesn’t fall.” This visibly frustrated said Postal Worker. After much finagling and rearranging, Matt squatted below the white screen and held Tori up in front of it while also ducking his head so he wouldn’t be in the picture. And, after a few shots, we actually got a pretty cute little passport shot of our baby girl! Enter cranky, dramatic four year old. Sigh.
Sidenote: Taking pictures of Daphne is a subjective experiment. You are entirely at her mercy. Daphne can smell fear and (if she is in a bad mood) and if there is a situation in which she can wield her power to create distress around her to match that bad mood, she will do so. Although, if I could use one word to describe Daphne, it would be "
unpredictable", so you just never know. This was not our day.
Matt and Isaac had to leave for soccer and I’m holding my fussy, tired baby and trying to get me 4 year old to look straight at the camera without throttling her. We FINALLY got her to look at the camera with a horrendous frown and grimace on her face and decided that would have to do. Then , we sat in the stuffy office waiting for the postal worker to print out the ridiculous pictures. I can feel persperation beading up all over my neck and face and then the woman says, “we are out of ink.”
And there I sat with the drama queen and the exhausted baby in the stuffy office, while they ran around hunting for more ink for the printer. I look at the clock: Noon. I'm running through the rest of my day in my head: Lunch, nap for Tori, get Daphne all gussied up in her dance costume for her Dance pictures, which are at 2 pm. Just then, the postal worker says to me, "We don't have any more ink, so you are going to have to get a passport picture of the little girl and bring it back here to me." No apology or understanding of inconvenience. Just a demand.
"Today? When do you close?"
"2 pm"
I am certain that at this point my face exhibited the sheer impossibility of this task.
For one, Ms. Postal Worker noticed my expression, "That's almost two hours." She said, as if that were an inordinately large amount of time to complete said task.
I couldn't even believe this was happening. How had my thorough preparations all fallen by the wayside? Ugh.
So, I trot off with my younger two in tow, trying to figure out how I am going to get a passport photo taken of Daphne. After running through my options, I decided to take the girls home, feed them lunch and take a picture of Daphne in front of my one white wall and print it out myself.
Matt comes home and is put in charge of getting the picture printed so that I can get Tori down for her desperately overdue nap and style Daphne's hair for her Dance pictures. Our printer won't work, and we can't find a photo lab with a 2x2 option, so Matt saves the pic and takes it to his Dad's house to print. I call him as he is en route to the post office. "Have you got it?"
"Yes. Oh crap. I didn't print two copies."
He turns around. Then, his dad's computer won't come back up. Good thing he's a super talented IT specialist for the government, huh? I wish I had useful talents like that!
I call him again at 1:50. Tori is asleep and Daphne is waiting by the van for me to get her to her Dance Studio, fifteen minutes away. "Matt, are you there?"
"Yes. I just handed them to her. She said,'There you are. I was wondering if you were going to make it. Oh, I don't know if they will accept these- they are too grainy."
Then I said, "Did you tell her it is their fault that they didn't have enough ink and they BETTER accept them!"
Matt replied, "I'm just trying not to throttle her."
Not that Matt would actually do that. Anyway, we still don't know for sure if Daphne's passport will be okay. We should hear anytime.
But, if this experience is any indication for how my encounters with international government employees will work, we're in trouble.
Here he and his partner are (note the height difference) figuring out what types of life they caught.
They had a bald eagle, which was very exciting- that is their school's mascot and Isaac loves eagles.
Now, I am not one to ask for specific gifts, but I must have told my children twenty times that I wanted these for Mother's Day. Somehow, my magnificent husband got the message and after lots of mixing here they are:
