Time to talk to my husband and explain where we are, and what we need to do.

He agrees to...

1. Stop working and come home and help me panic. In a while, that is, once he gets a little more work done.

2. Pack his suitcase.

3. Pick the children up from school and take them to get their passport photos taken.

Great story, Carol. Talk about your VIP, door-to-door service.

Sounds like everything turned out okay with the pregnancy as well.

I do finally manage to get an appointment with the D.C. passport agency for 8:30 Friday AM. If the entire process took exactly two hours then we'd be on our way back to the airport by 10:30. Delta flights were scheduled at 10:55 (not possible, not even in the hilariously tightly scheduled world in which I live), 11:55, 12:55, and 1:55. The very latest flight I'd want to catch would be the 1:55, arriving at ATL at about 3:50. I booked the 12:55, knowing that the 2:43 arrival would give us a little cushion.

Heck, we might even get to stop off at the Crowne Room for a drink or two. Or twenty.

Once I'd decided how we'd get back from D.C. I needed to figure out how and when to get there. Delta's earliest flight out leaves at 6:20 AM, arriving at 8:10. So unless we were willing to parachute from the plane while it was landing this wasn't going to be an option for our 8:30 AM appointment. I considered calling back to get a 9:00 AM appointment, but in order to do so you have to cancel your previous appointment first. And then you get to start all over with the phone reservation system, and by then there might not be the time that you want.

It's all very, very elegant.

So I booked us on a flight leaving ATL at about 7:30 Thursday PM. Coach on the way, first class on the return. Each ticket a bit over $700.

Therese,
I leave for Paris next Wed (assuming I make my "protected" connection) So of course after reading your story I just pulled the passport out to check. Even though I KNOW it's not going to expire for years (2010 to be exact!)LOL!

Since we were flying up to D.C. we'd need someplace to spend the night, right? Other than the airport, I mean: my family's pretty cool, but I can see them objecting to camping out at Reagan National.

A bit of on-line checking yields the expected high hotel rates, so I do what any experienced traveler would do---I head to Priceline. And Priceline turns out to be a good option for D.C., as there are lots of hotels and the geographic areas are small enough that I knew I'd be within a reasonable cab ride of the passport agency if I stuck to a couple of central areas.

I ended up at a 4 star in the Capitol Hill area, the Loews Madison for $95. Since Priceline only guarantees you a room for two people I then called the hotel directly and asked that we be given a room with two full (or queen) beds and pointed out that we'd be arriving fairly late, close to 10:00 PM. The receptionist was very obliging (I told her the reason for our trip) and made a note in our reservation and asked me to keep them posted if our plans changed.

The Loews Madison turned out (as per a quick check on google maps) to be easy walking distance from the passport agency. Thank you, Priceline.

Travel plans arranged, I start working on the children's applications. The form you use is DS-11, just in case you're interested.

The form requires all sorts of interesting information like their social security numbers. Which of course I didn't have memorized, and even if I had the chances of my retrieving anything coherent from my scrambled mind approached zero. I do have them written down, just in case (along with their SkyMiles numbers, and yes, I did use their numbers when booking their ATL-DCA flights so that they'd get credit), but those little pieces of paper are at my office.

So I called my husband, and of course he wasn't any help at all, apart from telling me to go find an old tax return. Which I did.

About the time I'd finished filling out the forms my husband got home, and started packing.

Did your heart skip a beat when you opened your passport, Carol?

Has anybody else done a surreptitious check, just to make absolutely, positively sure?

My husband, of course, doesn't just need to pack, he needs to do laundry. So he starts a couple of loads (we've got two washers and two dryers for reasons that I won't go into just now). He comes downstairs to the kitchen as I'm doing a final run-through on the documents:

DS-11s? Check.

Old passports? Check.

Documentation of imminent overseas travel? Check.

Boarding passes for ATL-DCA flight? Check.

Priceline confirmation? Check.

Hotel contact info? Check.

Google map of Capitol Hill area of D.C.? Check.

Lodging info and contacts in Amsterdam? Check.

All we lack is the passport photos.

Oh, and what about birth certificates? The State Department web site doesn't say anything about needing them in this particular setting, nor does the DS-11 form. But it still seems to me that it might be nice to have them along.

Here's the conversation I have with my husband about the topic:

Me: How about their birth certificates?

Him: Why would we need their birth certificates? Their passports prove that they're citizens, right?

Me: Well, yes, but I'd feel better if we had them.

Him: You worry too much. We don't need them, and I'd have to go up and get them out.

Me: Okay. Never mind.

I head off to start packing for me and the kids. My husband does something else while he waits for his laundry. Like maybe watch TV.

He watched TV while I was labor, too, now that I think about it.

My husband's laundry was just about finished when something else happened. Something that was actually so funny (even at the time it was funny, though my laughter was tinged with a certain hysterical quality) that I'm going to see if you can guess what it was.

The washing machine overflowed....

Or considering it's ATL the power went out...

(And don't make us wait too long, I keep coming back to check on this story LOL!)

Can't wait for the climax!

BTW, my husband and my OB watched college football on TV <i>in my hospital room</i> while I was in labor :)

bookmarking ... !!!!

It was the power.

The power goes out pretty frequently in Atlanta, as our power lines aren't buried underground, and we've got lots and lots of trees that tend to tumble over and bring the lines down. This mostly happens in the summer when we get these very impressive thunderstorms. This time was unexplained.

I'm one of those &quot;glass half full&quot; sorts of people, though, and I just figured he'd manage somehow. Our lodgings in Amsterdam had a washer and dryer, so if he had some dry but dirty clothes he could just take those, or he could buy some new stuff. Not a crisis.

It would have been a crisis, or something close to one, if the power had gone out earlier, when I was still glued to the computer making arrangements. I might have cried.

&quot;BTW, my husband and my OB watched college football on TV in my hospital room while I was in labor&quot;

In my case it was baseball (the Braves, of course) and even though my OB wasn't watching it was still sort of irritating. Not the baseball so much as the ads for Church's fried chicken, as I hadn't eaten since the previous night and was very, very hungry.

Speaking of the power going out, I just finished the next chapter and got ready to post it and our internet service had gone out, so now it's in the ether. So now I need to re-write it. Rats.

By now it's the middle of the afternoon, and time for the kids' school to let out. Husband heads off to meet them and keep them from getting on the bus. Daughter shows up but son doesn't. Husband explains to daughter that we're leaving early and why, and daughter's friends reportedly all look at him like like he's grown a second head and turn to my daughter and say, &quot;Yeah, your parent's are nuts.&quot;

While they're all nodding sagely at this observation my husband goes to find out what's keeping my son, and finds that he's got an interview for some school activity that can't be re-scheduled. So he waits it out.

While he's out the power's returned, so I finish the wash cycles, move the laundry to the dryers, finish packing for myself and the kids, and shower.

They're still not back, so I call my daughter (husband's cell either not on or not charged---why does he bother?). She doesn't know precisely what's holding them up, or where they are. I ask her to tell her dad to call me.

She forgets.

They finally all arrive home, passport photos in hand.

By now the laundry's dry and I've pretty much finished packing for my husband. I add the photos to my document stack, tell the kids to pack their daypacks with books, iPods, etc. and we finally set out for the airport.

We're hoping that the gods that control Atlanta rush hour traffic smile on us.

The gods smile.

We arrive at ATL in good time, park in our usual place (which is important, as I once forgot to park my car when catching a flight from ATL; it's a pretty funny story) in the airport Park-Ride, and catch the van to the terminal. We've already got boarding passes, and are traveling carry-on only, so proceed directly to security and on to our gate.

We're there in plenty of time. In fact, we're there hours ahead of the final take-off time, as it turns out that that our original equipment has gone mechanical, and the replacement equipment has to be moved from another gate (I consider volunteering to either move it myself, or herd everybody over the other gate), then it turns out that the plane was &quot;put away dirty&quot; and needs to be cleaned (they clean them? really?) and in the end we don't take off about 9:00. I've contacted the hotel to tell them we'll be late.

The flight is uneventful. Our seats are in the very back of the plane, so we're very nearly to DCA when the beverage cart arrives. I'm considering my options when the flight attendant tells us that the captain's buying us all drinks for our trouble. Go Delta!

So my husband and I both get pomegranate martinis. They are very nice.

No baggage to claim, so we head directly for the taxi stand, and we're at the hotel within half an hour of landing.

The hotel staff is all smiles, our room is ready (with sufficient beds), I arrange for multiple different sorts of wake up calls, and we all go to bed. And, incredibly, actually manage to sleep. We all agree that the beds at the Loews Madison are very comfy.