Crazy making...

Okay, I know everyone is sick to death of the passport situation, but I have to share what happened as it is entertaining in an alarming-bang-your-head-against-the-wall kind of way. Yesterday I finally got thru and was told it would be faster for me to re-apply for our passports. So this morning I went down there at 6am and was the 6th person in line. Yay! I was nervous because I was applying for Regan's too and wasn't 100% sure if I could do that, and the guy who took our photos was new and I was worried he did them wrong. Especially when he says at the end, "By the way, we 100-% guarantee if anything is wrong with your photo." Yikes. Anyway, all morning I prayed, "Please God, give me a compassionate agent to deal with!" So at 8:40 I was standing in front of this lovely woman named Linda. I love her. I told her my schpeel and she said, "If you don't have your old passports I have to get you to fill out the blah blah, and then get it notarized and blah blah..." I couldn't hear what else she said becuase I started to cry. Actual tears. I know... so pathetic!!! But all I could hear was, "You have to take ANOTHER form BACK to your crabby doctor and have him sign and Regan sign and on and on.." She looked at me with the nicest eyes ever. I said, "But passport Canada HAS our passports??" She went on to say she knows, but our envelopes are not open yet and so there is no way to prove that they are in it and blah blah... tears... crying. It was awful. Then she tapped on her keyboard and said, "Were your passports damaged?" I told her yes they were washed in the washing machine. She said, "Well, they JUST opened your envelope today and are saying your passports are damaged so you need another form to claim they are damaged and have it notarized and blah ... blah...." I was in shock. I told her I was confused because they PHYSICALLY HAD our passports in Ottawa!!! Then she started to pack up our new applications and photos and hand them back to me and tell me that since Ottawa opened our envelope and registered our apps that they had to process them and that calgary could not process them. I kind of stood there stunned. Not only did I have to fill out new forms and get them notarized, but now she is telling me becuase they JUST OPENED THE ENVELOPE TODAY EVEN THOUGH I JUST CALLED YESTERDAY AND THEY SAID THEY WERE NOT OPENED we were screwed. She actually did not say that, she was WONDERFUL and I told her she will be a part of our child's adoption story. She then shot a few e-mails to Ottawa, and explained our whole situation. She then gave me her card and told me to not stand in line and to come to see her when the forms were done and that "we" were going to figure something out to get our passports sooner than later. Did I mention that I love her?? So I flew down to Regan's work and arranged for a Notary to meet us there and we both signed. Then I flew back there and saw Linda who then had me write a statement expaining our urgency and that we were up against the dreaded court closures in the summer. I included the letter from our agency, and now it is up to whomever has our applications to hopefully decided that we qualify to get them in 10 days. Now it is totally out of our hands and I do feel relieved about that to a certain degree. I am going to call next week to follow-up and I am literally praying to God that they will say that they are on their way. A gal on my list had her dossier sent to Africa yesterday and while I am thrilled for her, I am sad for us. Our day will come, but today I am feeling a bit sad about it all. Anyway, all in God's timing!
Thank God for all of my adoption buddies. There is one gal, Jen, who is so damn funny I practically pee when we talk. We speak the same language on a lot of things. Our Mother's would not approve of most of this language... but we speak it none the less.

Then my Dad got his passport application back in the mail, for the second time, along with his birth certificate, and his old passport with a note saying that he did not provide any original ID stating he is a Canadian citizen... HELLO!! A birth certificate AND his passport???!!! What is going on in that place???????????????????? All I am saying, if I have learned anything about this is ..... if our passports get damaged... replace them (even though we used them for Mexico and Haiti) and never ever ever ever ( did I mention never?) MAIL THEM IN!!! And go early... any later than 6 15 and you are the 20th plus person in line. By 7 am there were over 50 people in line. Yikes again.

We stand on guard for thee.