Sudden Meltdown!

Well, it was bound to happen. I goofed. Probably not "tragically" but when there's a lot of time lost, and potentially some money lost, that's a catastrophe for me.

After we sent our Dossier to our Agency, everything looked great. Our Family Coordinator confirmed we were "expecting". :) Thanks for everyone's congrats! Then we got an email saying that we needed two more documents to clarify why there were two different "Director of Social Work" people. You see, just before we finished the dossier, our local director left and a new director stepped in. (Agency is trying to be efficient with money and can only pay for a director as needed and the previous woman needed work full-time.) So, now we have the Home Study by the original director, and other paperwork signed by the new one.

The agency thought it would prevent confusion if there was a letter stating what happened along with the copy of the previous license. It makes total sense. Hassle is that they had to be notarized and with a notary comes and an apostille. Rather than make the drive to Tallahassee again, I decided to overnight the papers, along with a cover letter that had our phone # and address on it, plus a check. They ask that you also include a Pre-paid package so they can send it back to you.

I had the bright idea to have it sent straight to our agency, rather than come back here, just for me to send it to them. So, I took everything to the courier service office and asked if I could pre-pay for an overnight letter envelope from Tallahassee to Virginia, for the apostille office to use to return our paperwork when it was finished.

Here's my first mistake. In my rush, I hadn't re-read the State's website saying it would take 5-7 workdays.

The courier service doesn't offer a pre-paid envelope (maybe if I had an account with them), but instead, offered another way of sending it. It's actually quite confusing and I'm not sure how the driver handles this, but the guy behind the counter assured me it would be fine. I put our paperwork, clipped to an empty, unlabeled courier envelope (I put a sticky-note on it saying it belonged to me) into a larger envelope that would be overnighted to Tallahassee. Then the courier has it in their system to check back to the office in Tallahassee for three days to pickup the unlabeled envelope that was supposed to hold the apostilled documents. The courier is supposed to have the overnight label for Virginia delivery ready to attach to it.

Did you see my first mistake? Website said it would take 5-7 workdays and my courier is supposed to check for 3 days.....

What's my second mistake? Again, after re-reading the state's website, I remembered that I was supposed to indicate which country the apostilles were for... I hadn't mentioned that in the cover letter.

Could it BE any worse. Well, there's one more.... I didn't put the Virginia office address anywhere in the cover letter, so IF they decide to mail back our paperwork, they will probably send it regular mail (so slow), and it will have to come back to me, if it gets back to me.

So, I was checking the Courier's tracking page and noticed (no surprise) that it's been 2 days of trying, and no getting my package. It would be a miracle if the office did finish it and got it to the courier for Virginia. The lady over the phone said they get hundreds of apostille requests a day.

Ever slap your palm to your forehead and say "stupid, stupid, stupid". Well, let's just say my forehead is pretty red...