I am a passport agent at work, and I just did yet another family I know - the youngest child is in Dillo's class at school. Thinking back I have done passports for at least 5 families I know from my kids' school. Other passport agents have worked here for years and never done a passport for someone they know, and it happens to me every couple of months!

We need to renew our passports; I'll have to remember to come to the library!

Steph, in most cases you can DIY renew, and save the $25 fee. Check the state department web site and it walks you through. (Children always have to renew in person, which is why I see all the kids.)

For those of you in need of house pron updates: here's a lovely bungalow! The problem with this one is I don't drive, and the bus routes are not very good. My mother suggests therapy and a return to driving would be paid for by the relatively low cost of the house: [link]

That's a great house, flea. Why don't you drive?

That place does look nice! Why don't you drive? When they claim "close to shops/library" etc are they using the suburban definition of close?

I learned late - not until I was 22. Then I drove for less than 6 months and was in a car accident that totaled my car. When I met mr. flea 6 months after that, he had a stick. I've tried to get back into driving several times - I think amych may recall an exciting hour we spent in a parking lot together - but I'm basically afraid to. So even if I could get driving, the idea of driving with my children fighting in the back seat is basically like the worst thing I can imagine.

No, it's 2 blocks to the neighborhood public library, walkable to a nice coffee shop, record store, comic book store, drug store, and the neighborhood rec center (which has a sprayground!). We drove from the house to my work today and it's ten minutes at 8:30am on a Saturday. There's an express bus that does my work commute in 20 minutes, but the slow bus (the express doesn't run weekends or evenings) is 50 minutes. And getting to the kids' school from that house by public transportation is an hour and a bus change, so it's pretty ridiculous. mr. flea would have to pick up the kids from after school every day, or they could take the bus and we could hire a sitter at home.

Is there no yellow school bus??

The kids can take the school bus to school, yeah. But I can't fetch them from after school (which I do 4 days a week), or get to school myself to volunteer (which I currently do once or twice a week).