What I miss

I'll abridge Friday morning's visa panic (camera store in Paoli made wrong size passport photos, despite me writing down the dimensions and mentioning three times that it's very important that they are UK size). Waiting two hours for photos that are the wrong size wasn't on my agenda that morning, when I was to be driving to see my mom in West Virginia.

Compensating for this was the very helpful young woman in the Paoli FedEx store. Again, I'm near tears, I was so anxious that I had done something wrong somewhere in this process. The visa application fee is $1,500. I paid $500 for expedited processing. What do you think it costs to FedEx 270 pages to Sheffield England, and include a FedEx envelope to have 135 pages mailed back? Try $350.

So a lot is riding on gettting everything right. If my visa application fails, I will be stranded in the U.S. while my husband, dog, and cats are in the U.K. So a little bit of stress.

I got on the road just after noon for a seven-hour drive through the Allegheny Mountains to the west side of West Virginia. I do love the way those gentle, tree-covered mountains fold in on each other, like an endless green braid. The road threads through the hollers at the base of the mountains. West Virginia's speed limit is 70, which is just fun on curves that hug one mountain and then another. So I will miss the infinity-like views at the top and the thrill of hugging the curves at the bottom.