Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska

Wanda's Diary Entries

Friday, May 9, 2008

The last Friday of last month, I finally dragged Henry to our local Walgreen’s to have our passport photos taken. I’d been putting it off since New Year’s; first my excuse was finishing up Season #4 of Simple Living, then it was taxes, then it was getting (most of) my garden in the ground. While foreign travel ranks up there on any list of exciting activities, obtaining the passport that will get you there tends to rank at the other end of the spectrum. Filling out forms, locating your birth certificate (or old passport) and getting that police-style mug shot taken are about as exciting as orthodontic extraction.

But my passport had expired in January, and with the months counting down to my July trip to Banff, I started getting anxious. I’d read reports in the papers about inordinate delays in processing passport applications. I kept biting my nails but doing nothing. So finally, before April turned to May, I forced myself to act. (While I seriously considered springing for the extra $60 for expedited service, my frugality prevailed over my anxiety.)

Imagine my surprise then when one week later—actually it was ten days—I reached into my mail box and retrieved…. my new passport. I mailed it on that last Friday in April and, lo and behold, that first Monday in May, it was sitting on my doorstep. Beneath the crisp navy cover, there was my cheery mug laminated atop a portion of Old Glory, in red, white and blue, with the beak of a bald eagle regally keeping an eye on my signature line. The U.S. State Department had come through for me.

Who knows the real reason for my expedited service. Maybe my envelope happened to land on top of the heap that day. Maybe foreign travel is down in this time of recession and the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs Passport Services, like J.C. Penney is short on customers so treating the ones it has with greater care. Whatever the reason, it the biggest shock of this month has been learning that—hope is alive—hallelulia! and that even bureaucratic wheels can spin quickly.