You would expect a family that travels often enough to know the basics. But we don’t. Two Sunday mornings ago, this is Alu and me chatting on the phone:
Alu: “So when are y’all leaving for Sweden?”
Me: “Friday”
Alu: “Hey - I’m assuming you have checked everyone’s passports”
Me: “Haha - not that stupid again”
On Monday morning I have all four passports in my hand.
Jo: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Checking to make sure all the passports are valid”
Jo: “Oh - they should be but Evan’s expires sometime”
Me: “Yep - like two months ago”
After some collective groaning, Jo moved into high gear to fix the situation - but it didn’t look good. The express passport offices in Dallas and Houston did not have any available appointments till after our planned departure date. Damn. But she was told that there may be cancellations and she should keep trying.
I don’t drive to Dallas very often but that day I did. I picked Aaron up from DFW airport and met a couple of friends in Dallas. At 15:21 I get a text from Jo. It’s a photo of an opened 42 oz party size bag of peanut M&Ms sitting on the console of Jo’s car. The text says “stress eating :(“.
A few moments later my screen is filled with smiley faces in a text from Jo. She got an appointment for Evan on Wednesday. In Dallas.
So two days later I am driving back to Dallas. I-35 between Austin and Dallas must be the dullest ugliest “construction-est" stretch of highway in the country. But Evan and I don’t care. He’s missing a day of school and we are going to get his passport renewed. Yay. I point to a huge rig doing some sort of construction on the highway and say “Hey - look at that thingie”
When you put the money in and make a choice the lid of a cooler inside the vending machine flips open. A robot arm with a sucker at the end of a hose appears and hovers over the compartment in the cooler that has the type of ice cream you asked. The sucker descends and nudges up to one of the mylar wrapped ice creams and the hose starts sucking air out, attaching the ice cream to the sucker. The arm moves to the front glass where there’s a bin below, the compressor shuts off and the ice creams falls into the bin. You reach into the bin from the outside and gather your booty. The robotic arm folds away and the lid of the cooler closes shut. Very cool. We enjoy the show as much as our ice creams, go back upstairs, wait for about 30 minutes, and walk out with a new passport for Evan. We are back in the car in the parking lot before 14:45 pm. The same federal government that seems incapable of doing anything is extraordinarily fast, efficient, and civilized when it comes to renewing a passport. This could have taken half a lifetime in some places.
Back in Austin at about the same time Jo took popsicles for Vivian and her friends to celebrate her last day in 3rd grade and then the ladies went out for a mani-pedi. Meanwhile Evan and I started on our three hour drive back to Austin. Through traffic, construction, and thingies.
Alu: “So when are y’all leaving for Sweden?”
Me: “Friday”
Alu: “Hey - I’m assuming you have checked everyone’s passports”
Me: “Haha - not that stupid again”
On Monday morning I have all four passports in my hand.
Jo: “What are you doing?”
Me: “Checking to make sure all the passports are valid”
Jo: “Oh - they should be but Evan’s expires sometime”
Me: “Yep - like two months ago”
After some collective groaning, Jo moved into high gear to fix the situation - but it didn’t look good. The express passport offices in Dallas and Houston did not have any available appointments till after our planned departure date. Damn. But she was told that there may be cancellations and she should keep trying.
I don’t drive to Dallas very often but that day I did. I picked Aaron up from DFW airport and met a couple of friends in Dallas. At 15:21 I get a text from Jo. It’s a photo of an opened 42 oz party size bag of peanut M&Ms sitting on the console of Jo’s car. The text says “stress eating :(“.
A few moments later my screen is filled with smiley faces in a text from Jo. She got an appointment for Evan on Wednesday. In Dallas.
So two days later I am driving back to Dallas. I-35 between Austin and Dallas must be the dullest ugliest “construction-est" stretch of highway in the country. But Evan and I don’t care. He’s missing a day of school and we are going to get his passport renewed. Yay. I point to a huge rig doing some sort of construction on the highway and say “Hey - look at that thingie”
Evan looks. Then he shakes his head and replies “Dad - that does not even look like a penis and I’m sure it can’t pee”.
We read a book a few months ago where a character named Ralph gets changed into a naked Australopithecus and everyone walks by and says “Hey - what happened to Ralph. And his thingie is showing”. So Evan has a very narrow definition of thingie. For the next two hours we work on broadening the meaning of the word as well as getting educated on some other similarly innocuous synonyms for penis. Good daddy-son bonding.
We read a book a few months ago where a character named Ralph gets changed into a naked Australopithecus and everyone walks by and says “Hey - what happened to Ralph. And his thingie is showing”. So Evan has a very narrow definition of thingie. For the next two hours we work on broadening the meaning of the word as well as getting educated on some other similarly innocuous synonyms for penis. Good daddy-son bonding.
We get to Dallas well in time for our 13:45 appointment at the passport office. After a 2 minute interview we go downstairs to the cafe and get ice creams from a vending machine.
When you put the money in and make a choice the lid of a cooler inside the vending machine flips open. A robot arm with a sucker at the end of a hose appears and hovers over the compartment in the cooler that has the type of ice cream you asked. The sucker descends and nudges up to one of the mylar wrapped ice creams and the hose starts sucking air out, attaching the ice cream to the sucker. The arm moves to the front glass where there’s a bin below, the compressor shuts off and the ice creams falls into the bin. You reach into the bin from the outside and gather your booty. The robotic arm folds away and the lid of the cooler closes shut. Very cool. We enjoy the show as much as our ice creams, go back upstairs, wait for about 30 minutes, and walk out with a new passport for Evan. We are back in the car in the parking lot before 14:45 pm. The same federal government that seems incapable of doing anything is extraordinarily fast, efficient, and civilized when it comes to renewing a passport. This could have taken half a lifetime in some places.
Back in Austin at about the same time Jo took popsicles for Vivian and her friends to celebrate her last day in 3rd grade and then the ladies went out for a mani-pedi. Meanwhile Evan and I started on our three hour drive back to Austin. Through traffic, construction, and thingies.
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