Ridiculous

I'm not sure if I should be angry with our adoption agency for losing our fingerprints, or if I should be pleased with them for helping us to fix the problem. Either way, this week has been a bit more interesting than it should have been. Here's the rundown:

- After express mailing our entire package to our adoption agency a few weeks ago, I brushed my hands of the submittal process and relaxed in the thought that I had no more power over my adoption application.

- A few days later, I learned that the agency had lost our fingerprints. These fingerprints had been taken in Shanghai, carried back by hand, and definitely included in my submittal. Arggh!

- On that same day, I learned that Dave and I forgot to sign our application form. Arggh!

- By a bad stroke of luck, we learned this information on December 31st - the first in a string of national holidays, affecting both FedEx (who expressed the form back to us for Dave to sign) and the Shanghai Consulate (who emailed the receipt for our fingerprints, so we could be re-printed in the states). This was Wednesday.

- On Friday, we knew that we would not receive any of our documentation before Dave left America. We ran down to the USCIS office in St. Louis, naively hoping to be re-printed at extra cost and have the whole affair taken care of.
Apparently, the fingerprinting process for people living in America differs dramatically from the process for Americans abroad. At first, we could not be fingerprinted without a letter of invitation. After lots of conversations, we could not be fingerprinted without proof of payment in Shanghai. This would not arrive from the Shanghai Consulate until the following week. After lots more conversations, and plenty of patient and helpful people, they took both of our fingerprints on ink cards and agreed to hold them until I could prove payment. Phew!

- On Sunday, Dave left the country.

- On Monday, we received the form from FedEx and the receipt for our fingerprints.

- This morning, with my receipts in hand, I went back to the local USCIS office and picked up our fingerprints. We won't publically discuss how Dave signed his forms, but they now sit snug and warm alongside those fingerprints, inside an envelope destined for USCIS in Chicago.

Which I entirely forgot to mail on the way home. I can't imagine a reason why the whole thing won't be in the mail tomorrow and out of my hands entirely... but then, I couldn't have imagined the trouble detailed above!