Tropical paradise, here we come!

Today Mark and I did something that most people have done much earlier in life than we did: we submitted our applications for passports. My family is all going to Belize later this year, so we finally had a reason to get passports.

My sister let us know that Costco had $5 passport photos. So we swung by Costco this morning, and 10 minutes later we were back in the car on the way to the aiport post office, which was only 5 minutes away from Costco. I thougth we'd be home in no time. I had our birth certificates; I had filled out our passport applications online and printed them; I had written out the checks to the appropriate government agency. We were ready.

So we show up at the post office at 11:00 in the morning. I have been to this post office before, and have always sped through the line. They are built for speed there, with 15 windows. However, today there were 2 people working--one guy doing passports and one guy doing postal stuff. We had the 3 youngest kids with us, so we all sort of squished into the room, as the line was already to the door. There were a ton of people with their passport applictions, and a bunch of people just mailing things. Who actually waits in line to mail things anymore? Haven't they heard of CLICK AND SHIP? The postman actually comes to your door and picks up the package for free!

We were there for 20 minutes before either of the 2 postal employees had finished the passport or mailing he was working on. Then things sped up, and 40 minutes later we were at the front of the line. Some joker came in and stood in front of us and told us he was there for a passport, and so he would start a passport line next to us and be the next in line to go to the passport guy. I quickly asserted myself and told him that he could wait at the back of the one line, because we had waited 40 minutes and were next for passports. I'm usually pretty polite, but I didn't even bother today. The three kids were totally out of control by this time, and Noah and Savanna were re-enacting their favorite Nacho Libre wrestling scene.

Our application process only took 5 minutes, but we were at the post office for an hour. I know that in a few months when I'm soaking up the sun, cave tubing and snorkeling in Central America, I will completely have forgotten my hostility about the inefficiency of the post office.