Permission to Leave the Country

At 51, (Yes teacher Julie is that old!) I have only been out of the country a handful of times, and those were only trips to Mexico before Passports were required.  I had heard horror stories about Passports and was not looking forward to the process.

The first step was to prove I was born in the US. (My sympathies to Obama, it's not always an easy task.)

I had absolutely no idea where "my" copy of my birth certificate was --- somewhere in a box in Cloverdale, in storage in Arizona?

So, I called the clerk of Contra Costa County. I was given great instructions and told the whole process would take 2 -3 days.  I emailed the form and my credit card number. Went to my local Notary, had her verify my identity and fax it to the clerk. Start to finish less than two hours and I'd have a birth certificate by the end of the week.

Week 1 passed
Week 2 passed--- I called----It was on the clerks desk, he/she would handle it that day.
Week 3 passed--- I called----They had never heard of me!---As it turned out in the last step of the process someone had misspelled my original last name. So they had a birth certificate for Julie Nierman, an envelop addressed to Julie Nierman Carter, and a receipt written out to Julie Hierman. ALL the computer records had me down as Hierman. The fix took 5 days!


Now I had my Birth Certificate and I needed to apply for a passport.  On the way to get my picture taken I dropped by the Cloverdale post office to make an appointment. Only one clerk in Cloverdale is trained to do passports and she was leaving on a week long vacation in 15 minutes! I thought about going elsewhere but ended up in the Coverdale Post office 10 days later. It took about 20 minutes with interruptions. The 2-3 weeks the postal clerk expected turned out to be just over 4 weeks.  But I now have permission to leave the country.  Funny thing, I may not actually need it since I'm flying on all military/government flights!

15 days and counting...