Navigating airport security with a toddler:

1) Grit teeth.
2) Take shoes off two-year-old.
3) Explain to distraught two-year-old that she will get her shoes back, provided that they don’t turn out to be flowery size-6T bombs.
4) Go through security gate to wait for our unsecured valuables.
5) Watch helplessly as husband–shoeless, beltless, and holding toddler–is instructed to take stroller to the farthest outskirts of civilization for special processing.
6) Observe x-ray technician letting our carry-ons through without even glancing at the screen.
7) Suppress the urge to put the carry-ons back through security just so someone will notice my excellent Ziploc-bagging skills.
8) Attempt to re-pack liquids and/or gels, laptops, teddy bears, and boarding passes while putting on shoes, belt, and four backpacks before next person in line manages to clear security gate. (Keep in mind that husband and child are still trekking back from the nether regions of Stroller Security Land.) Hope that next person in line will require a strip search.
9) Feel guilty.
10) Reunite with husband, daughter, and–eventually–stroller, once it has been deemed innocent of international terrorism. What a relief.

(We have, in fact, arrived in Italia. More updates once I snap out of the hazy world of Jet Lag.)

I don’t know how to put today into words. That’s the problem with being stuck in a half-finished story, afraid that if I start telling it before the dénouement has had a fighting chance, karmic retribution will leave us spinning in limbo forever. And I don’t even believe in karma.

At least I’m fairly certain that we’ve already reached the story’s climax (I couldn’t be much closer to spontaneous combustion) and that a spectacular ending is lurking somewhere inside the next two weeks (or we will be living under a bridge). How’s that for optimism?

If you want the ineloquent, nutshell version of the last 24 hours, here ’tis:
– Dan and Bethany lie in bed trying to figure out where our plans for Italy went wrong and what we can do to survive at this point. Little things like lack of job, lack of house, baby due soon, you know.
– Dan tries one last time to call The Godfather, who–Miracle of Miracles–answers his phone! He tell us that we have finally received our authorization from the government. Stunned silence. Brief bout with disbelief. Surge of overwhelming excitement. We lie awake in the dark for hours fantasizing to-do lists, giddy at the thought of our dreams being back on track.
– Dan goes to pick up our faxed paperwork… which isn’t there. Long-distance calling ensues. Turns out that the government didn’t technically authorize us; they just decided we didn’t need The Form. (Just to clarify, this form in question is indeed the one we’ve been waiting for since January, the one we’re required to have to get a visa, the one our lives have been on hold over.) That’s it. No form. After all. this. time.
– Bethany enters a warp zone between crushing depression (no form = lives over), surging hope (maybe the visa office has changed its policy on required forms!), and numbing bewilderment (what to do now?).

Stay tuned for a special appearance by Jack Bauer, who will threaten the well-being of government employees’ kneecaps until they give up the location of our visa. Or, who will hunt us down because we are living under a bridge and thus look suspicious.

::Fade out::