Motor City Mama

It's been a productive day. 

And for as much shuffling of papers as marriage/name - changing involves, it's proved to be a surprisingly speedy process.  In addition to laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and thinking about vacuuming, I also managed to procure (buy?  It was $15) a certified copy of our marriage license and get my last name changed at the Social Security Office.  I would have plenty of time to get my DL switched over today, but it takes 24 hours for a name change to register in the WWWDotGov system.  I suppose there's always tomorrow for that.  My new social security card should be here within two weeks. 

And in the meantime, I have a piece of paper that resembles mail addressed to Janna Beth Wells, to prove to the cranky ladies at the Secretary of State that I have, in fact, legally changed my name! 

And while digging out my old social security card, passport, and birth certificate to take to the SSO, I found the social security card Chris was sure was in the wallet he lost last weekend in Kansas City.  This is most excellent news, because being without a driver's license, SS card, health insurance card, passport, and debit card is something akin to waking up in a foreign country with no recollection of who you are or how you got there (at least in a legal sense).  A SS card is required to get a new driver's license, and a DL to get a new SS card.  A birth certificate, of which we lack a legal copy, is required to get a new SS card, but a DL and an SS card are required to get a certified copy of a birth certificate.  And a DL, SS card, and birth certificate are necessary for getting a new passport.  Losing more than one piece of identifying information at a time, it seems, is legally quite messy.  Thankfully, the situation became considerably less complicated as of two hours ago. 

The moral of the story?  That the ladies at the SSO are much nicer and more cheerful than those at the Secretary of State (and the wait much shorter).  Also, that I should probably [re-]hide Chris's social security card before he gets home from work, to stop him from rubber-banding it into his makeshift wallet out of habit (I got it from him when applying for a marriage license, and absentmindedly filed it away with the rest of our documents).  Yep. 

Our kiddo is either 29 weeks ripe, or 11 weeks premature today.  It's getting hard to be patient, because we're pretty impatient to meet our tiny new human.