My friend Gera likes to talk about life as a series of lines or rows, a white one followed by a black one, followed by another white one.
Stripes, if you will, of good luck and bad luck. When he feels like things are going very badly, he remembers that the next stripe is bound to be white.
This holiday season, I found myself thinking not of stripes, but of plaid.
We had a wonderful ten-day adventure back in Philadelphia for the holidays, but it was definitely plaid. Safe and enjoyable drive out -- no white-out conditions, no heavy rain, cats well-behaved overnight in the motel -- and a lovely day in Philadelphia. We got our visa pictures taken and went to a new (for me) Chinese restaurant for lunch, Han Dynasty, where the sesame noodles were to die for and the fish I ordered rivaled Peter Chang in Charlottesville (very high praise from me).
We went to the house and discovered water on the floor from the leaking washing machine, and overnight Steve couldn't sleep at all because there was water dripping from the ceiling into the 2nd floor toilet. Three calls to roofers over the course of the autumn hadn't gotten that leak fixed.
Our trip to NYC on Friday/Saturday was mostly successful -- trains were on time, we made it to the Polish Consulate, checked out MOMATH, the new Museum of Mathematics, had yummy Indian food with Mary and Roland, went to the Metropolitan to see the new Persian installation, and Liv and I went to Alvin Ailey on Saturday, which was amazing.
But despite all the documents I did bring with me, the Polish Consul wanted Zachary's official birth certificate to prove he is my child -- the one document we didn't have. Plus they charged us for our visas, $78 each, though 1) this is a new charge since 1 November; 2) "child" is something like 6-12, and the girl behind the counter assured me this is not inclusive of 12-year-olds, so Zachary paid full-price; 3) the provision I had found about teachers not paying doesn't apply to me -- only to those who lead students on study abroad. Steve had to run out to an ATM machine -- the Polish consulate doesn't take a Visa card.
All this and they said they still wouldn't start processing the visas until after we went back to OH and faxed them Z's birth certificate.
Success, or failure? Depends on how you look at it.
On Sunday we bought a new washer, a floor model -- so when they delivered on Christmas Eve they forgot the drain and couldn't finish hooking it up. Two more "tradesmen" came that day, a roofer, who said he'd come back and do the work after Christmas (but ... wait for it ... didn't get it done before we left town on New Year's Eve, and may not have done it yet), and the Verizon guy, who did fix the internet connection, though there's still a buzz on the phone.
(Right -- I forgot to mention that when we arrived at the house the internet basically didn't work, and you couldn't use the phone at all...)
Then the cat peed on the sofa. More than once. She is utterly freaked out, and I don't know why. She used to like the Philadelphia house...
But we had luminous times with the cousin, a fantastic lunch at Distrito with close friends, walked to get our tree, set it up (though had to go buy a new stand as ours went missing), and decorated it, made and decorated holiday cookies, had wonderful meals and good times with family throughout the week... Fun shopping, excellent show at the Comcast Tower, Salumeria hoagies at the RTM plus a lunch with grandparents at our favorite Burmese restaurant...
Much, therefore, was good and even excellent. But not everything. It was hard to enjoy any one positive event, because the next disaster wasn't just going to follow, it would definitely overlap. Joy and disaster simultaneously for much of the break.
The woman at the Polish Consulate looked askance at our marriage certificate -- which had no seals or stamps on it -- and I realized that we had forgotten to send in the bottom portion 12 years ago. Oops. Olivia instagram'ed "My parents aren't married!" to all her friends.
We decided to go register our marriage at City Hall. Fun to have the kids with us as we finally finalized the marriage, and they didn't charge us for the certificate, since it wasn't a copy, but the first one ever! Olivia sent another instagram: "Married (again)."
The return trip to OH was planned specifically so that we could land at the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Columbus on New Year's Eve before it closed at 1 p.m. We requested Zack's birth certificate, went to Steve's office to fax it, picked up yummy cheeses for the progressive dinner we were helping to host and discovered Hubert's Polish Deli at the North Market, so got a head start on Polish cuisine. When we got home, we discovered a notice from UPS from 10:27 a.m. that they had tried to deliver a package from the Polish Consulate in New York.
Yes, you guessed it -- if we'd come straight home and not stopped in Columbus, we would have received all our passports with visas. They were processed despite the lack of official birth certificate. UPS delivered the passports on January 2 at 4:00 p.m. So at least we have the visas, all hassles aside.
In short -- not striped, but plaid.
Stripes, if you will, of good luck and bad luck. When he feels like things are going very badly, he remembers that the next stripe is bound to be white.
This holiday season, I found myself thinking not of stripes, but of plaid.
We had a wonderful ten-day adventure back in Philadelphia for the holidays, but it was definitely plaid. Safe and enjoyable drive out -- no white-out conditions, no heavy rain, cats well-behaved overnight in the motel -- and a lovely day in Philadelphia. We got our visa pictures taken and went to a new (for me) Chinese restaurant for lunch, Han Dynasty, where the sesame noodles were to die for and the fish I ordered rivaled Peter Chang in Charlottesville (very high praise from me).
We went to the house and discovered water on the floor from the leaking washing machine, and overnight Steve couldn't sleep at all because there was water dripping from the ceiling into the 2nd floor toilet. Three calls to roofers over the course of the autumn hadn't gotten that leak fixed.
Our trip to NYC on Friday/Saturday was mostly successful -- trains were on time, we made it to the Polish Consulate, checked out MOMATH, the new Museum of Mathematics, had yummy Indian food with Mary and Roland, went to the Metropolitan to see the new Persian installation, and Liv and I went to Alvin Ailey on Saturday, which was amazing.
But despite all the documents I did bring with me, the Polish Consul wanted Zachary's official birth certificate to prove he is my child -- the one document we didn't have. Plus they charged us for our visas, $78 each, though 1) this is a new charge since 1 November; 2) "child" is something like 6-12, and the girl behind the counter assured me this is not inclusive of 12-year-olds, so Zachary paid full-price; 3) the provision I had found about teachers not paying doesn't apply to me -- only to those who lead students on study abroad. Steve had to run out to an ATM machine -- the Polish consulate doesn't take a Visa card.
All this and they said they still wouldn't start processing the visas until after we went back to OH and faxed them Z's birth certificate.
Success, or failure? Depends on how you look at it.
On Sunday we bought a new washer, a floor model -- so when they delivered on Christmas Eve they forgot the drain and couldn't finish hooking it up. Two more "tradesmen" came that day, a roofer, who said he'd come back and do the work after Christmas (but ... wait for it ... didn't get it done before we left town on New Year's Eve, and may not have done it yet), and the Verizon guy, who did fix the internet connection, though there's still a buzz on the phone.
(Right -- I forgot to mention that when we arrived at the house the internet basically didn't work, and you couldn't use the phone at all...)
Then the cat peed on the sofa. More than once. She is utterly freaked out, and I don't know why. She used to like the Philadelphia house...
But we had luminous times with the cousin, a fantastic lunch at Distrito with close friends, walked to get our tree, set it up (though had to go buy a new stand as ours went missing), and decorated it, made and decorated holiday cookies, had wonderful meals and good times with family throughout the week... Fun shopping, excellent show at the Comcast Tower, Salumeria hoagies at the RTM plus a lunch with grandparents at our favorite Burmese restaurant...
Much, therefore, was good and even excellent. But not everything. It was hard to enjoy any one positive event, because the next disaster wasn't just going to follow, it would definitely overlap. Joy and disaster simultaneously for much of the break.
The woman at the Polish Consulate looked askance at our marriage certificate -- which had no seals or stamps on it -- and I realized that we had forgotten to send in the bottom portion 12 years ago. Oops. Olivia instagram'ed "My parents aren't married!" to all her friends.
We decided to go register our marriage at City Hall. Fun to have the kids with us as we finally finalized the marriage, and they didn't charge us for the certificate, since it wasn't a copy, but the first one ever! Olivia sent another instagram: "Married (again)."
The return trip to OH was planned specifically so that we could land at the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Columbus on New Year's Eve before it closed at 1 p.m. We requested Zack's birth certificate, went to Steve's office to fax it, picked up yummy cheeses for the progressive dinner we were helping to host and discovered Hubert's Polish Deli at the North Market, so got a head start on Polish cuisine. When we got home, we discovered a notice from UPS from 10:27 a.m. that they had tried to deliver a package from the Polish Consulate in New York.
Yes, you guessed it -- if we'd come straight home and not stopped in Columbus, we would have received all our passports with visas. They were processed despite the lack of official birth certificate. UPS delivered the passports on January 2 at 4:00 p.m. So at least we have the visas, all hassles aside.
In short -- not striped, but plaid.
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