Today I was reading this book to Estelle.
And, in a nutshell, this book sort of represents my own day today.
In short (and I mean SHORT),
we got up at the crack of dawn for my annual DREADED pilgrimmage to the Prefecture (home to immigration and visas and all that).
Only to find out that the way it used to work is no longer how it works (despite my repeated phone attempts yesterday to confirm), and so all was for naught.
Now tomorrow we will pay 50 dollars to have someone take care of Estelle in the morning so Thomas can go get in the line at 6:30 and I will join him shortly before the doors open at nine so fight our way thru the process one last time as this time we THINK I get a 10-year card finally.

Then I tried putting underwear on Estelle after she had peed and pooped several times, only to have her pee all over the floor 30 minutes later.

Then I had to go to the Police Station to report our mailbox being broken into the day we can back from vacation. The vandals made off with 9 days of our mail (including checks made out to me by various teaching establishments, thus complicating my life to high heaven and god knows what else) AND the keys to our neighbors-the-musicians apartment. They had put the keys in an envelope and left them for us to water their plants, and put the envelope in our box the very day of our return. Within 6 hours, on a Sunday, someone got into the building, opened our box, cleared it out, and closed our box. It is bent and needs repair. How do they do it? This means locksmiths for the neighbors, insurance companies involved, etc etc and the need for a formal report filed with the police.

Thus the part of my day today called 'Nice Police Station is Anything but Hill Street Blues". Don't even have the energy to type out the whole story, but it involved one of the female police officers deciding that the moment I entered the male officer's office was the time to use his phone to call HQ and completely verbally freak out on her captain about the "quality of their work environment". Only after insisting 3 times that I did not see the reason why I and Estelle should have to sit and listen to this woman's tyrade did the officer relocate us to another office - where the woman followed us. Then they both lit into me about being American and how my country is no better and "just look at they way your government handled that situation with the hurricane Katrina".

Then Estelle got stuck in between two filing cabinets and started to holler whilst I was being beraded for my imperialist nation. Then she decided to poop in her diaper for a 3rd time today - which she never does.

And so on and so on. You get the picture.

Thus, Julie Alexander and the no good, very bad, blah blah blah.

Tomorrow will hopefully be better! :-)