Always Carry Cash

This week I have been working on our dossier for our next Chinese adoption. The process isn't too difficult, it just has a LOT of steps. I had to collect 20 different documents including things like police clearances, home study, medical certifications etc. The Chinese government knows more about us than we know about ourselves. This packet of 20 documents has to go through a serious of authentications. Not every page has to go through every step so that can be tricky to navigate. But, most of the papers go through this process:

Public Notary witnesses the original signature
County Clerk authenticates that the notary is legit ($1 per document)
Secretary of State authenticates that the county clerk is legit ($2 per document)
US State Department authenticates that the Secretary of State is legit ($8 per document)
Chinese Consulate authenticates that the US State Department is legit ($25 per document)

It's INSANE. Last go round we paid the adoption agency extra to take care of all the authentication steps and it was worth every penny. (We have a different agency this time and they don't offer that service.) This is an unbelievable amount of legwork.

On Monday we got the last piece of the puzzle so I could start this marathon of authentication. Autumn and I took all the papers to the Howard County Clerk's office then drove to Annapolis to the Secretary of State. I was feeling pretty good about my paper pushing abilities until I got home and double checked everything. I had ONE letter that was notarized in Baltimore City. The Howard County Clerk overlooked that little detail (so did I.)  I had Howard County vouching for Baltimore City which they have no authority to do. It also invalidated my Secretary of State authentication. (Yay! Another 45 minute drive to Annapolis!)

So, today I drove to the Baltimore City Courthouse and it was very......well, interesting.

Howard County only accepts checks, the Secretary of State only accepts credit cards, and (you guessed it) Baltimore City only accepts cash. I didn't know about that last part.

I never carry cash. I literally did not have ONE DOLLAR to pay for this letter to be authenticated.

The lady at the Baltimore City Courthouse directed me to the nearest ATM 2 blocks away. I went to that location and the building was closed for construction. At this point, it was approaching lunchtime and Autumn was complaining that she was hungry and I REALLY had to pee.

I found a little deli to buy Autumn a snack and got up to the register but there was a minimum $5 charge for debit card purchases. I either had to buy 3 bags of chips or none at all. I put the chips back and we hit the potty. When we came out of the bathroom a nice man who was behind us in line had bought Autumn her chips. The kindness of this stranger was the only thing that kept my head level.

We found ourselves wandering around downtown Baltimore in search of an ATM. Finally, I found one in a little Chinese restaurant down a dodgy-looking ally. By this point we were five blocks away from the courthouse. Autumn was as happy as a clam meandering along and munching on her BBQ potato chips without a care in the world. She really is such an easy going kid.

After returning to the courthouse we discovered that the lady who sent me to the ATM to get a dollar was on her lunch break. This is important because she had told me to come directly to her window so that I didn't have to wait in line a second time.

We ended up at a different person's window and he took my letter and he authenticated it for me. I tried to hand him my $20 bill to pay the fee and he said, "nah, don't worry about it."