Illinois Certification - Practice version
I decided to take our local police letters, which come pre-notarized, to the Secretary of State's office to get them certified. The walk-in service office in Chicago is on State street between Old Navy and Filene's, across from Nordstrom Rack. Know your Chicago Landmarks. It's in a building shared by the Joffrey Ballet and a couple other businesses.
When I walk into the building, I see that the lobby is full of beautiful vintage light fixtures and brass and whatnot. Every other light fixture has a pink bulb in it, which is presumably because October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, but I take the pretty pink and white, and the presence of a reknowned ballet company, as a sign that the gods of Architecture, anyway, are smiling on my efforts to adopt a little girl. A little girl who will be raised as an ardent feminist like her mother and who will possibly have no use for ballet or the color pink, but still. I'll take any good omen I can get.
The Secretary of State's office is predictably grey and dreary, but there's only one person in line ahead of me so I'm still feeling optimistic. I fill out a form requesting certification of the documents - not a very complex form, but I forget what it says on it. As I give it to the gal behind the counter I'm expecting a barrage of questions ranging from "certification? What are you talking about?" to "who do you think you are, trying to adopt a child!?!!" Instead, she says "four dollars" and lets me figure out for myself that I should go sit down and wait for my name to be called. About 5 minutes later, they call me and give me my certified docs.
So, I still have to do this with all the other docs, once they're notarized, and I still have to take everything to the Chinese consulate to have them seal it. So I'm anxious about all that but not nearly so much as before. Practice is good.
With luck we can pick up the doctor forms tomorrow. If so, the "mobile notary" will come to my house on Tuesday night and notarize the whole dossier, and then I can walk it through the next steps.
