My Passport in my hands.....

Yesterday, coffee still in my cup...the fed ex man pulled into Lynsey's drive on a mission.
The fed ex man in his fed ex shorts knocked on the door in a fed ex fast fashion. Each knock yelling URGENT!
Chloe went crazy-go-nuts at the commotion and decided biting someone/thing would be appropo. She took out her aggression on her raccoon toy named Bobby.
I opened the front door and he held out his little electronic scan tron with a No. 2 computery pen for me.
I signed the little signature pad, in an excited scribble. I knew. I just knew what was safely sealed inside the flat envelope.
As soon as the door was shut, standing in Lyns' foyer, in a beige vintage night gown, hair still proudly displaying the fact that it hasn't been awake long, I ripped the little "pull to open" tab across the envelope.
I saw a blue legal sized envelope.  Stamped: RETURN TO CSM OFFICE
I gulped...thinking...noooo...what!
But I cast it aside and looked deeper into the darkness of the fed ex envelope. (turns out it was just my birth certificate.)
There...quietly in the darkness was the glorious navy blue booklet.
I lifted it out, held it in my hands and thought "This is what cost us $165 bucks?"
I opened the front page, Saw Francis Scott Key and the first part of the National Anthem...quote by Abe Lincoln...yeah yeah yeah..I'm not gonna forget that stuff...
And I turned the page...
There in all it's gloriousness...The Bald Eagle standing guard over the photo of me...in my brown cord jacket...kinda smiling...kinda not...but mostly looking like I'm smelling poop..and my face...looking a lot fat.
Awesome.
I was smelling something stinky when the picture was made...but it was more of a vegetable soup and sandwich variety. I thought of Chef...snapping the picture in the old musty building there at ft. meade.
The way he referred to himself in 3rd person while he was out to lunch.

I did a happy dance. Which was more-or-less some disco shuffle mixed with a lady ga-ga arm punch/leg kick. Which wasn't as stylish as Madame Garland's 'c'mon get happy' dance routine...but I didn't have the ensemb of men falling at my feet while I shimmied to a show tune.
But, it was my dance o' joy. My one-step-closer-to-my-husband-who-is-living-in-Europe-already dance.

I realize that I'm not going to Germany tomorrow..and there is still the whole waiting on the paperwork thing...but...
If I HAD to get to my husband...at least now, I know I could :)