Minor Mayhem

Hoo-boy. It’s been a frustrating couple of days dealing with USCIS stuff (immigration). I don’t want to bore you with details, or rant about the inefficiencies of our federal government, but they’ve had me in a freaking tizzy! Their website has conflicting information on where to send our I-600A form (Application for Advance Processing of Orphan Petition -- say that 3 times fast), so I called them several weeks ago to get a clearer answer. I was told to send the form to the Atlanta office. Well, it was returned yesterday with a letter saying to file it with our state office. Yet they don’t say where that is, and they still have conflicting information on their web site about it, and then the hellish phone tree I entered last night put me over the edge and I was ready to pull out my newly highlighted hair! We certainly don’t want that, so I finally contacted my social worker and asked her. (I should have done that to begin with – darn independent spirit of mine.) I got a quick and accurate answer and it took all of 5 minutes to take it to the office that is a 2 minute drive from my house. Ugh!

This wouldn’t have been so distressing, but it’s topped off by the fact that there are different versions of my name floating around, and we are trying to make sure all our documents agree. When I married I wanted to keep my maiden name somehow, but I didn’t want to hyphenate my last name. So I made my middle name Monica Garza instead of just Monica. My passport recently arrived (yahoo for that!) without the Garza, and because we don’t want any inconsistencies to come back to haunt us, we’re taking up valuable time to re-do other papers to match. I'm a very patient person, but it's tough to have weeks wasted when you're already looking at a wait long enough to test the patience of Gandhi. Frank says to consider it our "morning sickness" phase. Let's just hope I don't actually throw up. :-)

I just keep remembering that this is small potatoes compared to other potential hiccups, and that some day we will be thankful that the process was delayed because of some unforeseen future benefit. Things happen the way they're supposed to happen, right? I’m also trying to keep it in perspective. So, while I complete forms while sitting on my couch bought from Sofa Super Store, I will remember the 9 firefighters who recently died in the fire there, and how they and their families would love to trade “problems” with us right now.

Ok then. So now that I’ve brought everyone down (truly sorry about that) it’s time for a much needed glass of wine to brighten the mood. Come to me, Luna di Luna...