My days in Sao Paulo aren't generally stressful as I don't plan too much for any one day. You never know if traffic is going to cooperate, and I need to be home by 3:30 to get Mac off the bus.
So my planned schedule for Friday was the following:
7:45am - get Mac on the bus
10am - go to grocery store to pick up care package stuff for one of Jimmy's colleagues who was in the hospital
11am - arrive at hospital to visit Jimmy's colleague
11:30am - go to Starbucks because my favorite Starbucks in Sao Paulo is conveniently located near the hospital
1pm - go to Mac's school to help set up American booth for International Festival on Saturday
3pm - pick up Jimmy at consulate (Mac had a playdate arranged) so we could get to Brazilian Federal Police by 4pm to get our federal police record (YEAH!)
Sometimes planned and actual don't jive. Here's what happened:
7:45am - got Mac on the bus
10am - went to grocery store to pick up care package stuff for Jimmy's colleagues
11am - arrived at hospital and visited with colleague and his parents. Volunteered to go by consulate to take care of some stuff for colleague.
11:15am - called Jimmy from car to see if he was at consulate to drop off colleague's stuff. He said he was there and could I come by then? Starbucks off the schedule but thinking that I can swing by McDonald's after consulate for a Happy Meal.
11:25am - pulling into consulate, I received a phone call from a friend asking if I was still at the hospital. She'd just had a dizzy spell (after a car accident when she hit her head) and was understandably nervous. She said she was going to take a taxi to the hospital, but I told her I would come get her and take her back to the hospital. No Starbucks, no McDonald's. Now chewing a stick of gum for lunch.
11:30am - dropped off stuff from colleague for Jimmy. Had him meet me in the parking lot to save time in picking up friend.
11:50am - picked up friend to go back to hospital (which, in 1.5 years in Sao Paulo, I had never visited - now twice in one day!)
11:52am - dropped off International Festival decorations at school because I knew there was no way I'd be back by 1pm meeting time.
12:15pm - arrived at Emergency Room and learned how the intake process works (which hopefully we won't need in the next 2.5 months). Called other American booth mothers from school to tell them I'd be late but that my stuff was there.
1:15pm - received call from one of the school moms asking if anybody else was coming as she was the only person who'd shown up.
1:30pm - left ER (friend's husband joined her there by now), but had to wait - for second time that day - an inordinately long time for hospital valet to bring car around. Chewed another stick of gum for second course of lunch.
2:10pm - arrived at school, thinking I only had 30 minutes to work before leaving to get Jimmy.
2:30pm - received a voice mail from Jimmy (no reception inside school) that said we didn't have to leave consulate until 3:45pm (and not 3pm).
3:30pm - left school and realized I was almost out of gas after traversing the city a couple times today. Quick stop at gas station where I finally had a nice attendant who wanted to wash all the windows of the car, but sadly I didn't have time to sit there while he washed everything.
3:40pm - ran through drive-through of McDonald's for french fries and Coke Zero. Before circling the block, everything has been devoured. I even dug out the straggler fries and ate the ice in the coke. Should have gotten a supersized meal.
3:45pm - arrive at consulate and miss Jimmy while he comes back from mailroom and I'm using the bathroom. Go to his office, he wraps up stuff and we leave with a map in hand of how to get to this police superintendency which is way on the northern side of the city.
4pm - on the road
4:45pm - stuck in traffic
4:50pm - talk to our police contact who's going to meet us. He asks where we are, we tell him, he says we've gone too far, but we tell him the address we were given and it turns out we were supposed to meet him at a mall parking lot so he could get there a short-cut way. Shoot. I hate miscommunication. Police department closes at 5:30pm. Will we have time to get there and actually get the report?
5pm - get to police department but our contact is still en route after crossed signals. He gets somebody else to help us and we get started.
5:15pm - our contact shows up
5:30pm - we start getting nervous because the guy doing the check tells us it'll be 20 minutes and the garage where we've parked our car is only open until 6pm.
5:45pm - do we need to move the car? Fique tranquilo, we're told (stay calm). The reports should be ready any minute.
5:50pm - the man comes out with our reports, we thank everybody profusely, and we get back to the car before the garage closes. Our contact is so nice - he escorts us the short-cut way that we missed so we can avoid some of the bad traffic.
7:15pm - a mere 1 hour and 15 minutes later of horrible Friday afternoon, rush-hour traffic, we arrive back at our apartment complex to pick up Mac
7:45pm - arrive at our neighborhood churrascaria because we think we've earned a lot of meat and grilled cheese after this day.
The bad news: Friday's long day was followed by Saturday's long day at the festival and then dinner with friends. I need a weekend to recover from the weekend.
The good news: all's well that ends well. At the end of the day, the missing piece of our adoption paperwork puzzle (for at least this part of the puzzle) is done. We have the federal police report and now just need to make that quick trip to Rio to the consulate. More to come...
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