Paperwork Nightmares

I'm heading into a full on rant here, so if you aren't interested go to someone else's blog now. My husband just pointed out to me the title of my blog, and I retorted that I don't have to love government agencies.

This all starts with our re-adoption of Nes. Yes, for those of you not familiar with foreign adoption, once you finish the adoption process in the child's birth-country you have a resident immigrant with your name. You get to re-adopt them in the US, more paperwork, official looking stamps and $$$. When this is said and done, you have...what exactly? A US birth certificate with the possibility of a new name and/or birth date based on what you have chosen and/or evidence that the previous information you had was plain wrong. You also have a green card that doesn't match the US birth certificate. Are you with me? So you head down to the social security office, where they giggle at you and say you need some other official looking paper with a stamp on it that says something else. You will ask, what office? They will smile and shrug. So you will go home and google it. You will be sent to the Dept. of Homeland security that will tell you you need a certificate of citizenship, more $$$ please. Then you can get a social security number, and a passport. If you try to sidestep this step you will be told that you need a SSN to get your passport. For an SSN you need some kind of photo id. How many photo id's does your four year old have?

When I called the Doctor's office to get a copy of his check up with his height and weight they asked for his birth date. My husband gave them the date on his US birth certificate. They said that was not the date in their file. I yelled from the other room that his Ethiopian birth date is the one that the insurance company has. They then got all huffy about giving him Nes's file because they might be giving information with and incorrect birth date. Are you kidding? Do they work for the IRS or Homeland security?

Bottom line, some questions just don't have straight answers. How old are you? Seems simple enough, but really there are A LOT of people in the world that just don't know that. It's okay, they are still people and you can still talk to them. When is your birthday? Yep, some people don't know, some have more than one. Life is messy folks. Especially for rule oriented paper pushers, these things just get them wound. The answer is not another form. Maybe the answer should be "none of the above" or "other" or some other ambiguous answer like that. All of life should not boil down to fill in the blank forms, sometimes an essay answer is required, or maybe a conversation with a rational person that can think this through.

I could go on about why we should support small ministries instead of huge bureaucratic organizations. I could plug for small government. Really this is just a frustrated rant, and a plea for a little common sense. And an explanation for why if you ask me how old Jubilee is and I give you one answer and then give you her birth date, ya, they don't add up.