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Welcome to Round three of the Parenting
Roundabout podcast for the week of May twenty

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second. I'm Nicol Artics. I'm
here with Katherine A. Lecco Hello,

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and Terry Morrow. Hello. We're
moms of teens and young adults, and

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when it comes to parenting, we've
been there, done that, bought the

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T shirt. Who are still waiting
for that day when we'll reach the finish

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line and have no further need to
lay down in a dark room with a

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wet rag over our eyes wearing about
something or other. Wednesday is complaint Day

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here on Parenting round About, and
today we are complaining about getting passports,

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and not just not we so much
as Nicole, and not so much as

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passports in general, but like emergency
passports, and I think I think it's

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just more of a commentary on just
how inefficient some systems are, oh gosh.

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And the other part of that,
too is how thankful I am that

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my kids are older and I don't
need to drag them around to stuff like

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this anymore. They can go do
it on their own, So they are

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taking care business on their own.
I'm taking care of my business. So

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yes, when I became an American
citizen. It suddenly dawned on me that

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I need to travel out of the
country in you know, within two and

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a half weeks to my daughter's graduation, and so I needed an American passport

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to get back into the country,
and I didn't have one. So I

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gosh, I like, I honestly
don't understand how people who are multilingual,

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you know, whose English isn't their
first language, how they are able to

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decipher all the steps that you need
to follow to do things like this,

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Like these are really important things,
and it is just so consuming and like

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there's so many different pieces to remember. But the crux of the whole thing

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was is that there's only a handful
of passport emergency passport offices in the US,

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So the one closest to me is
LA. But if there hadn't been

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an available appointment, I could have
been asked to go to Denver or Virginia,

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Virginia, Mexico. Yes, yes, it was so stressful. So

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I had to get up at like
four am and call this live phone number.

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But I went on to read it
folks, and I got like a

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few little hacks on how to hack
the phone system and get to an age

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in past. Nice of that.
Smart. But yeah, so I ended

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up driving into La yesterday three hours
to get there because of traffic. It's

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seventy five miles. Took me three
hours. Yeah, And just like I

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understand the whole security piece of it, but it was like a two hour

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lineup to get into the building,
into the building, into the building,

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folks, And then from there there
was a hour lineup to get to the

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check in window. Jeez. And
then once you get to the check in

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window, you go sit in the
seat like you do at the DMV,

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and you wait for your number to
be called. So that was another hour

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and you didn't have an appointment.
I did, and you still had to

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do all this. Everybody has to
do that regardless. Gosh, you have

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to have an appointment to be there. My appointment was for eleven thirty,

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and I finally saw my lady at
like two thirty or three or something like

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that, and I was there like
an hour beforehand, right, And then

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she says, well, you're not
going to be flying for a couple of

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days, so you can come back
on Monday and pick it up. What

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because I was hoping to get the
same day, right, Yeah, And

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I'm like oh my gods now,
and then it took me three and a

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half hours to get home because of
traffic. So I've got to do this

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all over again on Monday. And
so let me tell you. Like,

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so the other part of that was
like watching the kids in there. Oh

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my word, I was just like
part of me felt so empathetic, and

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then part of me was like,
I'm just going to tune out and not

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watch. I can't. Not my
problem, not my circus, not my

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money, is not my problem,
like I just But then there was one

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dad in there who was probably well, he looked pretty probably in his thirties,

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with his kid and his nanny who
was looking after the kid. Maybe

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he was getting a passport for the
nanny. No she because she was off

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entertaining the kids. Mhm, why
didn't they stay home? He must have

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been getting a passport for the kids
because the kids. Yeah, because you

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have to get out, you got
to go on for your kids, and

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they have to be there right right. There was a lot of kids there.

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Oh my word. It was madness
in there. So yeah, do

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you remember the days when you had
to drag your kids around all kinds of

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things and wait, like doctor's offices, and yes, all kinds of painful,

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yes, events like that. I'm
just thinking about when we were in

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Russia. We had to get us
passports for the kids before they could so

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you could take them home with us. Yeah, they had Russian passports,

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but we had to go to the
US embassy in Moscow and go through all.

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It wasn't quite that excruciating, but
it was a lot of waiting with

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kids who had, you know,
been out of an orphanage for like three

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days and everything was new to them. And my son had zero interest in

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sitting still on a bench, so
at one point he pulled away from us

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and hit his head on the wall. So I think his passport picture has

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like a big lumpet like, yeah, we're really good parents here. He's

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only got one bus, that's fine. So yeah, I remember that being

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just sort of like a you know, it would be hard enough if we'd

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had them for years and we had
lots of toys and stuff for them to

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do, but as it was,
it was just like, you know,

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bitch, you're glad to be out
of that playpen boy, please do not

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leave my lap for the next three
hours. Why that was but the best

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passport passport. Thing I ever had
was my daughter's marching band went to Quebec.

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There was like a lot of the
kids didn't have passports, a lot

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of the chaperones didn't have passports.
So they had like a passport event at

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the high school and all every bunny
who was going to go on this trip

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could come, and you could bring
your family members as well, even if

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they weren't going, just because and
they had somebody from the passport office there

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and just did everybody at once.
Wow, that's services super good. Keep

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your ears open if there's some some
organization in your town it's going going out

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of the country, Say did I
just pop by? Are you having a

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passport at that there in the cafeteria? I just wander by, wouldn't hurt.

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I'll wait till last. Yeah,
that was awesome. I had to

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get my son's passport renewed and when
he was over sixteen but under eighteen but

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did not have a driver's license,
And it was like the person at the

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post office who was handling it just
had to spend like half an hour consulting

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all of her references and resources trying
to figure out like what types of ID

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were permissible in this highly irregular situation
to them like, surely he's not the

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only one. So it eventually was
was done, but boy, it wasn't.

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She also rejected the passport pictures that
we took at Walgreens. She was

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like, no, these aren't.
But then she took her own, so

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she said, you can get your
money back from Walgreens, but I will

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now charge you, you know whatever, ten more dollars to do it here.

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So wow, because they were turning
people away, like they had to

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leave to go get their photos done
elsewhere. They weren't doing them there because

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there were people who were turned away
because their photos. Yeah, this was

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at the post office, not like
a passport agency. But if I guess,

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if I had known that they would
just do it themselves, I wanted

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to be even bothered going to Waller
Brains, Like why wouldn't I just have

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you take it? I you know, I thought it would speed up the

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process obviously if we brought our own, but no, not if they're you're

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not adequate. Wow, but we
did get it, get it done,

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good, good, good, good
glad you get another one for like ten

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years? Ten years, Yeah,
awesome, as as bad as it gets.

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Just remember you don't have kids with
you exactly. A long boring thing

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by yourself is stressful enough, but
man, getting through a long boring wait

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with kids. I used to used
to have a pediatrician who there was always

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at least an hour wait, even
if we had an appointment, And I

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just finally left and found a different
pediatrician because it's like, I really like

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you, I like your office,
I like your nurses. Everything's great,

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except I cannot ask this boy to
wait for an hour. By the time

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he gets in there, he is
so hyped up that everybody's like, why

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won't you just sit still? It's
like he's been setting still right, so

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yeah, and picking up who knows
what in the waiting room. Yeah,

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you know, that was awful.
I felt so bad. I wrote them

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a letter after we left, saying, right, this is why I wish

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you continued success, but maybe not
quite so much so that. Yeah.

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So it's nice when the kids can
stay home when you go out and do

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Oh, it's the best deal with
it. Even better when they get old

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enough to do it on their own
right, or at least have a phone

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that they can sit and look out
for two hours while we're waiting for things.

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Well it was the other thing too, right, Like, well,

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my kids are young, we didn't
have them. Yeah, looking at cell

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phones. Yeah. I used to
have a purse full of minor amusements.

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They could be broken out at any
time. At Decca cards, some dice,

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let's see, oh flash cards for
your test tomorrow. Just be able

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to pull them out one after the
other untill the way was over. If

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I ran out, that was I
would take coins out of my purse and

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my son could line the coins up
like there were cars. Many times,

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the credit cards we would line up
the credit cards on it would be right,

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what else do I have? Look, the purse can be a hat

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after I jump out all of this, all of the stuff that times,

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after I juggled the cart wheels and
sing for you, right man, If

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we had had iPads, then my
life would have been so much easier.

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All you people who sneer at screens, have mercy. We were walking,

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walk a mile in your shoes.
We would do the ice spy game,

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and the you know how many colors
can you name in this room? And

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oh my gosh, there was endless
thing list of things I would come up

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with. They all lasted such a
short time work with me here. But

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yeah, it's nice now that they
can stay home and amuse themselves if they

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and if they have to go out
and do things, they're just bored on

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their own without me having or deal
with it or entertainment danum, Oh,

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you have to wait for your appointment, so sorry, well you never have

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to wait to hear what we have
to say because we're here every dar and

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day, right on time. But
that is it for today's Round three.

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Tune in tomorrow when we'll obsess about
superhero skills, and then on Friday to

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see what we've come up with for
our Roundabout Round up picks this week.

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Find all our episodes at Parenting roundabout
dot com and talk back in the comments

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there, on our Facebook page or
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