Bureaucracy and the Crazy Cat Lady

This is kind of how I feel right now. . .

I'm a little bit stir crazy. Maybe more than a little bit. Maybe . . . maybe bananas. Like Walter Bishop level bananas. Like clutching my lap top to my chest and moaning 'my precious' bananas. Like I've started refer to the dog as 'young man' when scolding him bananas.

It's not that things haven't been going well. I'm actually kind of surprised at how well I've managed to hold everything together. I set up a shelf system I got at Walmart all by myself and that thing was a monster, tool-less set-up aside. I organized all of our games onto said shelf and then cleaned up and neatly packed all the stuff I'm saving  for a garage sale into boxes (I'm probably never going to have a garage sale, but it is on my bucket list). I've kept the house in decent shape. We've actually eaten real dinners most of this week, some of which were even healthy.

Chicken, lentils, and salad, oh my!

I am not naturally a clean, organized, or healthy person, so I thought I'd kind of let it all slide when deprived of my persnickety better half (He is the better half for practical reasons. I'm nicer and more entertaining so I have a few points on him where other people are concerned as long as said other people don't expect me to get anything done.). It has been harder to make myself exercise but a lot of that is simply time getting away from me and not having another pair of arms to hold Claire-Bear when she is clingy.

Friday was probably the worst. On Friday I had a errands to run related to Claire Bear and government bureaucracy but I felt like I would be able to accomplish them.

Matching Outfits, so . . .generally not me

I even dressed up the girls in matching outfits, which is a big deal considering most days Claire does not make it out of her footie pajamas and Coryn dresses herself (she does pretty well. I'm not picky). Our task at hand is Claire's long over due social security number. We are certain we applied for one when she was born, but there is no record of it. We hadn't noticed that we were missing this crucial piece of information until we started thinking about tax returns and then, oh noes, she has no number. The government now wants us to prove our baby exists and it needs to be more than a birth certificate. There aren't a ton of baby identification methods, but we had settled on shot records but the ones that the Naval hospital here gives out are apparently not the ones that the social security people want because after sitting in a crowded waiting room for about an hour with my matchy matchy girls they told me that this one wouldn't work because it didn't have her date of birth.

"Yes, it does, right there," I said, pointing to the place my doctor had written Claire's date of birth.

"But it doesn't say 'date of birth,'" the guy explained.

"So, let me see if I understand this, if she had written 'date of birth' next to the date of birth you would be able to accept this, but since she didn't you can't? If I got her to write it on there and brought it back would you accept it?" (I have to admit at this point I was thinking about going around the corner, writing it in myself, taking a new number and praying that I got a new clerk or that this clerk had short term memory problems)

"Maybe. . ." That didn't sound too promising.

I think I was confusing him, maybe I was using my annoyed voice. I don't think I was but some people are sensitive to it and I was admittedly annoyed even if I was trying to be level headed about it (probably not government dude's fault that government is stupid even though sometimes you get lucky and get government dudes who know government is stupid and are willing to help you by blurring the lines between date of birth written in by the doctor and date of birth written in by the mother on behalf of the doctor) . Either way he said "just a minute" and the next thing I know I was talking to a supervisor. She said I needed a special form they call the "long blue form." I asked her if there was a more specific name for said form because I didn't want to bounce back and forth and yes, indeed, there was a  name that was something like "letter, letter, number, number, number, number." I wrote this down, called Matt, vented about it almost in tears (I hadn't really had breakfast that morning and I get emotional easily when hungry). If there is one thing a military man will emphasize with it is government bureaucracy. All those jokes on MASH about forms in triplicate with long sounding names in order to order toilet paper or whatnot make a lot more sense once you've stuck your toe into military life.

We went to McDonalds--we've done that more than our fair share lately--and then managed to hit the hospital again where the records lady knew what form I was talking about. She printed up one form which I had to take down to immunization and have them print up another form to sign and attach to the first form and apparently these are what I need. Thankfully everyone at the hospital was really helpful even though the young sailor at immunizations answered his window with, "Yo, wazzup" which I don't think is official policy (he apologized for it, but I may have actually smiled at that point and I was having the day I already described to you so that is saying a lot). By that time I had to get the girls home for Claire's nap so I still haven't gotten the chance to take the papers down to the other government place. First opportunity to do so will be tomorrow but we are also out of milk and I'm not sure how many outings in a day I can stomach.

So what else has happened lately. . .

Oh, I was listening to someone describe a skin care product the other day and they mentioned it had caffeine in it saying caffeine was really good for the skin so I got it into my head that I should exfoliate with coffee grounds. Best idea ever! I saved a couple of days worth of used espresso grounds (I have a small espresso machine so I'm not talking a coffee filter full, more like a couple of table spoons at a time, also the grind is a little finer than pre-ground coffee) and took them into the shower tonight. They aren't as gentle as some exfoliating products (I felt like my skin was definitely coming off at one point, but of course I could've just been rubbing too hard), but my skin felt soft and perky afterwards, like really soft and perky. I think I'm going to make this a weekly habit. I would like to include a picture, but for obvious reasons, I was naked while this was happening and that is not an advisable picture to take, let alone post. Still, I probably looked pretty funny covered from head to toe in coffee grounds.

A few words of caution:

1.  Don't get the grinds in your hair. They will hide there and not leave.
2. You will probably smell like coffee for awhile afterwards as will your shower. If you think this is a bad thing, then you are just silly and I'm going to throw bananas at you. Take it like a man.
3. If you have white tile you are probably going to want to clean the shower afterwards. I just rinsed mine down the drain but we have this gray stone looking stuff in our shower and I can see white grout getting stained if not attended to carefully.

So, in other words: coffee grounds are my new wonder product. Coffee rules!

I had better get ready for bed before I get any crazier.