It is days like Monday that I realize why I try and put a big Lord-willing over all my well-laid plans.  We have been trying to leave to head to Italy to join Joe on Saturday.  This has involved trying to get things out of our New Jersey home, packing up things for overseas and getting Isaiah a passport.  On Monday, I had planned to pick up Isaiah’s birth certificate and then head into Philadelphia to apply for his passport.  The first trip of the morning to pick up his birth certificate went off without a hitch, but after that the fun began!

In order to get Isaiah’s passport immediately, I needed to be able to show that I was traveling in 2 weeks or less.  So Joe had informed the team that I needed my travel itinerary by 9:45am on Monday morning in order to head to my 10:30am appointment at the passport agency.  Unfortunately, there are time restraints that are not always understood in European cultures.  So at 10am, I was still sitting at his parents house waiting for the itinerary.  I was going to drive there with Isaiah, but since I was running late, Joe’s mom took the driver’s seat and we piled Elijah, Naomi and Joe’s cousin Leah who had slept over the night before.  On the drive there, we kept in touch with Joe to see if the itinerary had been sent yet.  I arrived at my appointment, 15 minutes late and was hoping the e-mail would be there and I could show it on Joe’s mom’s cell phone (I don’t have a data plan so I couldn’t get e-mail on my phone).

Once I got inside though, I was told I could not have my cell phone on.  So the security guard told me I could walk to a UPS store” around the corner” and have my e-mail printed out (as long as it was there).  Since I had taken Joe’s mom’s cell phone, I knew she was driving around, but had no idea where she was.  So I decided to walk to the UPS store.  At this point, I had Isaiah in his infant car seat.  For any of you who have ever carried one of those, you know they feel like they weigh 50 pounds.  Well, around the corner ended up to be about 3.5 blocks away!  I got the the UPS store and Joe had called me to tell me the e-mail was there.  So I got it printed out and walked back to the passport agency.

Once I got in through security once again, I got back in line and realized I had dropped my application somewhere along the walk to the UPS Store.  So I stood in line and filled out another one.  I got through the first step of the process and got a number to wait to be called up to a window.  After having been there for about an hour, I got the call to come up.  I handed over my paperwork and the agent stopped on the DS-3053 form.  This is the form for those who are applying for a minor’s passport but only one of the parents is there in person.  The form states that the non-applying parent must have the form notarized OR if the non-applying parent’s signature cannot be obtained that the applying parent can fill  out a section explaining the situation and sign it.  Joe had left for Italy rather quickly and we had not had time to have that form notarized, so I filled it out and explained our situation.

The agent then proceeded to tell me that this form was going to have to be notarized.  When I said that the form clearly stated that if the signature could not be obtained that the lower section could be filled out, he simply shrugged his shoulders and said I would have to find a way to get it notarized.  So I asked him what it mean by “cannot be obtained” and he said, “Well, that means it’s like impossible.”  I said that my husband was in preseason in a small town in Sicily so that it would be nearly impossible to get his signature notarized by Saturday when we were scheduled to travel.  He just sort of looked at me and shrugged again and said I would just have to travel later then.

So I left the office and waited outside for Joe’s mom who had been circling (and getting some gas in the tank…I had planned on having 45 minutes to get there and filling up before I left!).  So we stopped for lunch on the way home with some hungry and tired kids.  When I got back to Joe’s parents’ house, i made a few phone calls to see what more I could find out.  Every agent I spoke to said that it was basically up to the agent’s discretion on whether the notarized signature could be obtained or not.  I firmly stated that the form did not say this anywhere, because if it had, we would have tried to get that taken care of before I went in that day.  I asked if a power of attorney could be used, but that was also a no-go.  My dad then made some calls to get some help through a representative in PA that he has supported in the past.  His connections worked their way all the way to the New Hampshire passport headquarters, but we still just heard we were going to need Joe’s signature notarized.

Joe did some searching around as well and found that there is a Consular Agency in Palermo, Italy, which is two hours from where he is located right now.  Thankfully, the team was kind enough to give him a morning off to drive up there if need be.  Next he called around to find a UPS store in Palermo to see if the drive up there and got the notarized document if it could be overnighted to me.  After being transferred a few times, he found a woman who said they could get it to me by 8am on Friday morning (I had scheduled another appointment for Friday morning at the passport agency).  So, this morning Joe drove two hours to have this documented notarized and overnighted and it should arrive tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile I drove up to State College last night to finish packing up.  I had planned on coming back here Tuesday morning, packing up and then driving to the Philadelphia airport on Saturday.  But instead I have been in the midst of a speedy unpack and re-pack here as well as preparing the house for us to leave.  Thankfully Joe’s parents were able to keep our oldest three so I could focus my main energies on getting things done around here.

So we are still going to try to leave on Saturday as long as I can get the document and the passport on Friday.  But as one of the agents I spoke to told me, “there is no guarantee” that I will have a passport when i go on Friday.

Of course, we could have just changed our travel date.  One reason we didn’t want to do that was because Joe had pushed so hard to get the team to book the tickets and get the itinerary to me in the first place, so we didn’t want to cause more hassle to have them change the tickets.  And secondly, we wanted to push through this because Joe and I both do not always handle things that are out of our control very well.  We both like to be in control and when things don’t go our way, we tend to just give up on them.  So we both felt this time like we should push through our comfort level and do what we could to keep the trip on Saturday.  Stay tuned to hear how it turns out…