After putting in 3 hours of ice skating Saturday (see what happens when you adopt kids from Russia!), I unwound by reading a few Russian adoption blogs.

I was catching up on Russian Adoption Journey, which chronicles one New Jersey couple's effort to adopt two children (they are just about headed home!). One particular episode struck a note of recognition with me: Their efforts to get an apostille in New Jersey on an employment letter written in Texas.

A what, you ask?

This particular bit of adoption fun is brought to you by another Hague Convention, this one a 1961 agreement on the legalization of official documents for international use. The Netherlands-based bureaucrats, in their infinite wisdom, called this process apostille, borrowing a French word that means certification.

As you assemble the paperwork for your adoption, you will be asked to have many of the documents notarized. And most of these notarized documents will eventually need to be authenticated and apostilled: A clerk will check that the notary who stamped your documents had a valid commission to do so. Sounds straightforward, right?

But, as with so much other paperwork in an adoption journey, it is not. New Jersey cannot apostille a document notarized in Texas (or any other state, and vice versa). Bad enough, but it gets better: The notary's signature must be authenticated by the county that issued his or her commission.

My agency, like many others, took care of authentications and apostilles for me, so I was largely spared any hassles. But as we raced to update several expiring documents that I needed for my hastily arranged first trip, I offered to do some of the leg work.

My doctor's letter--like every other document in my file--had to be redone because my second adoption took 18 months to complete. My doctor, whose office is in Manhattan, had his signature notarized at bank around the corner from his office. I took the letter to the county clerk's office in lower Manhattan for authentication. The state office that does the apostille was close by, so I thought I could do both documents at lunch. But the Manhattan clerk's office couldn't do the authentication: The bank notary's commission was issued in Queens, one of the four other boroughs of New York City, and a separate county. And Queens was were I would have to get it authenticated. Forty-five minutes by subway from lower Manhattan, one way, if I was lucky.

I arrived back in lower Manhattan at 3:35, five minutes after the state clerk's office stopped processing paperwork for the day--and the week. I would not have my letter. I could not leave for Russia.

But the door to the office was still open, so I walked in and did the only thing I could: I sat down on a chair and started sobbing. Loudly, uncontrollably, terribly.

I got my apostille.