The Family that Gets on the Grid Together
Yesterday, Mama Dog and I finally took care of some bidness* that’s been hanging over our heads for a while, namely getting passport photos for Baby Dog and myself. Yes, it’s pretty damn funny that we have to get a passport for a girl who’s barely a year old, but those are the rules. The funniest thing is a U.S. passport lasts for ten years, so Baby Dog’s going to be showing her one-year-old photograph for identification until she’s in double digits. A fellow at work told me that because he was working in Japan when he and his wife had their daughter, they had to get a passport for her at three months of age. That’s one not very utile piece of photo ID, in my opinion.
We went to an ID photo place over by the Claremont Diner. Mama Dog went there to get her own passport photo a little while back, and they really seem to know their ID stuff there. I pulled out a piece of paper with the specs for the ID I needed, and the counter lady very briskly said, “Yes, Canadian citizenship document, very different from American passport.” She knew exactly how it needed to be done. We were getting photos for a total of three documents: U.S. passport for Baby Dog and Canadian citizenship documents for Baby Dog and me. I need the latter as a preliminary step to renewing my Canadian passport – the whole thing’s a rather long, drawn out process. Previously, I would send a wallet-sized birth certificate extract document along with my passport application, but apparently they stopped accepting those after some post-11/9 forgery scandal, and created this “proof of citizenship” document instead. I figured as long as I was getting my own I might as well get Baby Dog’s too. We want her Canadian citizenship established now so that she can easily go there to avoid Jenna Bush’s all-gender draft in 2022.
All this is sort of much ado about nothing, because it’s just preparatory work for going to Edmonton at Christmas time. A passport isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary for any of us – still – to cross the border into Canada. But it’s a good thing to have along and speeds stuff up.
Strangely, I left the photo place almost manic, babbling happily to Mama and Baby Dog as we strolled our way home. This happens to me every now and then. I call it the TCOB high. When I’ve finally checked some long-dangling item off my to-do list, it’s just a relief that I come out of it feeling like I’ve been popping bennies and am ready to conquer the world. Of course, all I did when we got home was put away that load of white laundry that had been wrinkling up in the basket since Tuesday, but hey, you use your high your way and I’ll use my high mine.
___________________
*paul – I know it’s properly spelled “business.”
We went to an ID photo place over by the Claremont Diner. Mama Dog went there to get her own passport photo a little while back, and they really seem to know their ID stuff there. I pulled out a piece of paper with the specs for the ID I needed, and the counter lady very briskly said, “Yes, Canadian citizenship document, very different from American passport.” She knew exactly how it needed to be done. We were getting photos for a total of three documents: U.S. passport for Baby Dog and Canadian citizenship documents for Baby Dog and me. I need the latter as a preliminary step to renewing my Canadian passport – the whole thing’s a rather long, drawn out process. Previously, I would send a wallet-sized birth certificate extract document along with my passport application, but apparently they stopped accepting those after some post-11/9 forgery scandal, and created this “proof of citizenship” document instead. I figured as long as I was getting my own I might as well get Baby Dog’s too. We want her Canadian citizenship established now so that she can easily go there to avoid Jenna Bush’s all-gender draft in 2022.
All this is sort of much ado about nothing, because it’s just preparatory work for going to Edmonton at Christmas time. A passport isn’t, strictly speaking, necessary for any of us – still – to cross the border into Canada. But it’s a good thing to have along and speeds stuff up.
Strangely, I left the photo place almost manic, babbling happily to Mama and Baby Dog as we strolled our way home. This happens to me every now and then. I call it the TCOB high. When I’ve finally checked some long-dangling item off my to-do list, it’s just a relief that I come out of it feeling like I’ve been popping bennies and am ready to conquer the world. Of course, all I did when we got home was put away that load of white laundry that had been wrinkling up in the basket since Tuesday, but hey, you use your high your way and I’ll use my high mine.
___________________
*paul – I know it’s properly spelled “business.”
posted by PapaDogDuvalier | 10:17 PM
2 Comments:
"Bennies" reminds me of reading early-seventies MAD Magazine comics that depicted drugged-out hippies with spirals in their eyes rather than pupils. I would learn maybe 8 years later that "bennies" were slang for "benzedrine."
You're dating yourself, Papa Dog, as these days the kids are calling speed "crystal meth."
Actually, I meant it as kind of an archaism. I tend to think of "bennies" as a 50s beat-era kind of term, very much pre-us. I think "doing speed" is the term that would date me most accurately.
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