Everything ground to a halt today when I had to go to the immigration place in San Antonio and sit on a chair for three hours doing nothing, like you do for fun nearly every day, obviously. The fact that I had to go meant we all had to go, especially as I’d innocently assumed the “appointment time” was an appointment time. No seriously, totally my mistake, it’s not like I didn’t have a plethora of relevant information from previous experience with which to guess more rationally.

However, the afternoon unexpectedly turned out really well. The small jet-lagged member of our group was able to take an extended afternoon nap without inconveniencing anyonre any more than they would have been already, and the other three parties got a large unexpected amount of Bonus Knitting Time. Which would not have happened either had there not been a Bargain Craft Shop next door to the immigration place in the middle of the nowhere on the edge of town where we were. The BCS had enough extra knitting needles and wool for our Sole Knitter to become an entire Knitting Circle, and one tiny IKEA teddy bear now has half a sweater he did not own this morning. After the 3 hour wait, I spent a few minutes having all my fingers multiply printed in enormous size on a computer in panoramic all-round stereophonic vision, and then we drove back home and played badminton. Good day, and significantly less frenetic than the last two. So even the United States Immigration Department has some incidental benefits, not that they were deliberately trying to help us relax and knit, otherwise they would not have made us spend all afternoon with kids in a waiting room with no beds and a food and drink ban.

Had to ask Medium-Sized Child what my phone number is for filling in the form. Must get round to memorising that some time.