Today I went to the passport office to get passports for Emily and Escher. Waited in line for 20 minutes. Was then informed that Emily can’t get one because she is 16 (and has been for all of five minutes) and her old passport is a child passport and now she is an “adult” and that the 12 pieces of ID we have for her, including the old passport are basically moot and that she needs a drivers license. So now, I have to go get her a drivers license. Swell.

Then they process Escher’s. Verify all the ID and completeness of the application and give me a number that they will call whenever a) I win the lottery; b) Jesus comes back c) Jesus comes back and wins the lottery or d) never.

So I sit there for two hours watching people who have drivers licenses skip gleefully in fields of rainbows, holding hands and getting passports in front of me (Oprah style… “You get a passport and YOU get a passport and you get a PASSPORT!!!!)

I finally get called to the counter (Jesus came back and won the lottery and I didn’t make the money rapture. Mom was right), and the woman looks at Escher’s application and says he cannot have a passport because he only has the birth certificate issued to me by the province of British Columbia and not the magical secret birth certificate that has my name on it that I should have spontaneously decided that I HAD to have for no reason at all. So I said “Are you fucking kidding me?” At which point she said that there was no reason to swear (agree to disagree). At which point I said “WHY wouldn’t you have told me that two hours ago so I didn’t sit here?!?!” And she said “I guess we missed it”. Which I can totally understand because there were TWO whole pieces of paper to review. TWO.

So THEN I said that the normal birth certificate had been fine for my daughter’s passport and that there was nothing anywhere that suggested that I would need anything other than his legal Canadian birth certificate and she cheerfully replied “Oh ya, we changed it.”

So now, I am officially stabby, and I say “Why in the actual fuck would you not have that written somewhere and why would you not EXPRESSLY check to make sure that what I have is exactly what I need in the first fucking line up?!?!? I have ID, it’s in the same name as my son, I have every piece of information possible about him, I have his nexus card, I have his baby photos, are you seriously denying him a Canadian passport?!?!?” And she replied that there is no way to know if he is my son. So I lost my barely restrained shit and hollered at her “That’s the most fucking ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my goddamn life, he is my son, he came out of MY fucking vagina, (strictly speaking this is a lie, but I didn’t feel as if uterus would have the effect I was going for) Would you like a picture of that???? FUCK. Give me my fucking shit right now.” And then I grabbed my insufficient proof off the counter and marched out of the office with as much dignity as is possible once you have yelled the word vagina across a government office.

Sooo yeah. Once I get the proper documents, I may just submit this in the mail.