Red Tape

My husband and I are moving to Paris next month. This state of affairs sounds exotic, exciting, and/or extremely bizarre, depending on individual opinion. To me, it runs the gamut of all three, as well as a few other descriptive adjectives like: amazing, unbelieveable, and incredible. Are those words all synonyms? Anyway, you get my point; I am pretty excited about the whole sha-bang.

However, everything is not all rainbows and butterflies here people. The move is also, incidentally, rather anxiety-inducing. There is this annoying self-doubt ticker-tape that has been playing at the back of my mind as of late. As in: "What are we doing here exactly?" "Is all this effort/up-ending of our lives really worth it?" and my personal non-favorite, "Why fix what is not broken?"

With regards to the latter ticker-tape question: I will say that I am not up for needlessly dissecting things or breaking apart functional objects. But when it is life we are talking about, merely maintaining the staus quo does not resonate as my cup of tea, bag of oranges, or plate of croissants. The doubt may be there, but I have to keep reminding myself that we are not needlessly "fixing" something. Instead, we are potentially improving upon that which is already quite grand. And this doubt nonsense is only at the back of my mind. And some neurosis/self-doubt is natural in these situations, right?

I say right. And so, off to France we go...oh la la.

Except that we are not actually going anywhere as of yet. There is quite a bit of that darn proverbial red tape to cut/hacksaw your way through before you are able to go and live legally in France.

Yesterday, my husband, also known as mon mari, and I went to the French consulate in Atlanta. We had appointments for our Visas to be issued because we were finally told that the consulate had received my paperwork from the university at which I will be working while we are in France. From my end, and just so you know that I am not a lazy imbecile, I completed all my necessary paperwork around Memorial Day. The delay sort of occurred as a result of the fact that seemingly all of France went on vacation in June. This state of affairs placed a minor wrench in the works of having the whole assembly line of university/government/whoever-else-wields-the-bureaucratic-sword give their respective stamps of approval on my docs.

So yesterday we drove to Atlanta, which is a jaunty 5 and a half hours from our house. We opted to stay over the night prior to our rendez-vous just so that we could have the piece of mind of knowing we would not be late for our appointment with destiny (not to be too dramatic), and also so that we could avoid spending eleven hours in the car in one single day.

I love a good road trip, but eleven hours is just excessive in my opinion.

While in Atlanta, we ate dinner at a delicious French Bistro (it seemed only appropriate to set the mood via food) and we went to bed early. We woke up at the crack, we armed ourselves with caffeine and croissants (mood still being set), and we arrived at the consulate approximately one and a half hours before they opened.

As a brief aside, we passed this time reading the USA Today that I had grabbed from the hotel lobby. Not being a routine newspaper reader, it came as somewhat of a surprise to me that reading USA Today is comparable to reading US Weekly with the addition of an "Idiot's Guide for Managing Money" section. Entertaining: yes. Heartening as a viable newssource for the country in general: Heck, no.

Sitting in the consulate waiting area with our hefty bag of documents was significantly stressful. The fact was that I was so eager for someone to stamp my passport with a "yes," in the form of a visa, that I am fairly sure I could have made some poor life decisions had they been presented to me. Note to peddlers everywhere: if you ever want to swindle someone, catch them coming in or out of a consulate. They will likely be so desperate to exert control over some iota of their life that they will undoubtedly sign on any and all dotted lines you place in front of them.

But anyway, while waiting, I was ingesting my surroundings and was feeling fairly optimistic about the percieved friendliness level of the woman behind the glass who was collecting paperwork and telling people when they could (or could not) expect to receive ther visas. I mean the power she had! Amazing. She seemed moderately happy in that understated "I work at a bureacratic intistution" sort of way, and all seemed to be progressing swimmingly...until this guy ahead of us really jammed a pickle up everyone's nose.

Let me first say that this pickle-jammer appeared quite "normal" at first blush, and even quite stylish. He had on designer jeans, nice looking shoes, and a white button-down.

Well no one said that dirtbags were without fashion sense. Shame on me for judging the book by the cover.

Mr. Designer Jeans had an epic 'tude that was marked primarily by the fact that he evidently knew more than anyone else on the planet with regards to Visas--including the woman behind the glass. No one liked his ubiquitous condescension, but of all the people not enjoying his purported omnicience, the woman behind the glass was the clearly leading the charge. It was all rather awkward, especially so because the only person who failed to see this dismal turn of events was high and mighty himself.

Did I mention he was a law student? Not to imply anything by that. Just saying.

At this point, my level of fear had increased due to the overall mood of the place being altered. Making matters slightly more stressful (yes, this was possible) was the fact that the guy who was up next, the only other person before us, was plain not looking promising AT ALL. Now this particular Mr. Scrubby Pants was wearing a grubby t-shirt, shorts with visible stains, crocs of all the God-awful footwear he could have selected, and his hair was quite fascinating with regards to its level of unkemptness.

And again, shame on you, Miss Maggles, for judging a book! Pig-Pen was on top of his business. He was polite, he was efficient, and he may have truned around the mood of the Visa woman. Well, not to go too over the top. At least, he returned things back to neutral, quasi-friendly, ground.

So then my husband and I are called to the window. Things go FAIRLY well. We had a few minor questions to answer and stumbling blocks that we thankfully overcame. We passed our mound of paperwork through and were told that we would have my Visa by the 13th.

Ummm...okay, but we are leaving on the 5th, and I need to be at work on the 8th.

After explaining this state of affairs, our response was roughly as follows: "Okay. Well you may have it by the 1st, maybe by the 5th, or maybe by the 13th."

And what about my husband? "Oh well, you may have his by the 13th or maybe by the week later or maybe by a week later than that."

Very politely, we indicated that we really needed to leave by the 5th, and that we really hoped to leave together. Would that be possible?

So she says: "Oh yes, I know you need to leave on the 5th, and that you need to leave together. I will put a note on here for them so they know that."

To which I say: "Oh, thank you so much. So everything will probably be fine then."

To which she says: "Maybe. But I really doubt it. They usually do not even read my notes or care about them."

To which I say: "So I guess we just hope for the best."

To which she says: "Yes, you can hope. But I doubt it will work."

To which I say: "Okay. Thank you so much."

Darn red tape is almost edging Designer Jeans out of the first place spot for life's current irritants. Almost. But oh well. We will hope and we will see... C'est la vie!