As a Recently Married Person, I've recently also had the pleasure of changing my name. On the whole this wasn't much of a problem, really, other than the fact that my new last name contains punctuation. Some can handle this. Some cannot. What's really funny is watching people try to pronounce it.. (yes, we of the funny names do laugh at your feeble attempts, but only to keep from crying).. but I digress.
I went to the social security office to start the fun, and found myself behind the guy who turned 62 a few months ago and was there "tew coleckt mah beenifeets". When I finally got to go, I had my forms filled out and had every form of id known to man. The girl was so thrilled her frown turned into more of a grimace. So that was easy. No punctuation there, by the way.
The DMV was busy and it was lunch hour. I was still working on my form when someone walked up and asked, "Are you just changing your name honey? Go stand by that wall." Um, okay lady. Turns out she was sneaking me in early. Hooray for looking small and pathetic. Also, no punctuation.
The bank was easy. Wham, bam, your name is changed. WITH punctuation. Yay banks!
My credit card company was great. We had fun spelling over the phone. They asked if I wanted to get my husband a card - why yes I do. Yippee! Also, punctuation!
Paul got his card in a few days. I eagerly waited for mine. About 3 weeks later, I called. Oh, you wanted a new card? Why yes, genius, I do. Especially since I would up dropping my last name and so only one name on my card applies anymore (the Stephanie part!!). If some cashier having a bad day questions me, all I have to argue with is a passport and who carries their passport?? So I finally got my new card, and stuck it in my wallet right next to the old one - it takes a while on hold to activate, I'll do it later, gotta go!
That was September.
Note that it is currently December.
For months now, the little cards have been nesting in their card holder in the wallet. Today I finally bothered to activate my card (which took all of 5 minutes) and took out the old card. This shiney, new card slides WAY too easily right out of my wallet and through some swipey machine, or into the cashier's hand, or into that little slot that sucks it in and spits it back out.
So, Paul. It is not my fault. It's my wallet's fault. Please pay the bill by the 21st.
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5 comments:
That's funny. Paul is a sweetheart who doesn't know what a size 8 dpn is, but he will pay the bill. :) I was just debating with myself (coz i am once again bored at work) about how to get my passport updated. I haven't seen mine since we got back from the honeymoon, so what do I do from here? I think www.passport.gov or some other random gvt website will answer that for me :)
Stephanie, I am curious. How long from the time you got married until the time you went to the SS office and started the name change process? I was a terrible procrastinator about mine.
Also, did you drop your maiden name? What about you Rhett (if you see this)? Did ya'll keep your middle names or take your last as your middle or keep them all? I am very curious what other women are doing these days. Part of the delay in doing mine was because of the debate my mother and sisters and I had on this issue.
To open the debate on names, I dropped my middle name and made my Maiden my middle now. I work in a company where I see lots of names and there are a LOT of women who keep their middle even after they are married. I don't get it. I mean, everyone in my family has done it this way, and I just thought that was the way you *should* change your name, but after taking an office survey, I was pronounced the minority in the office. Oh well. I think that is b/c most people here have had more than one husband so it gets tricky.
Well... I debated. And debated. Because I really liked my middle name better, and my last name was quite boring, and the middle name was my great-grandmother's, but my dad changed his name (and thus my last name) to match his step-father. I couldn't keep them all because someone quickly brought it to my attention that those initials would spell something dirty in the middle. So I stuck with my middle name, which was really a last name to begin with anyway.
Weird, my bloglines totally did not update with your blog, even though I specifically told it to. Jerks. Luckily I had a feeling something was up and decided to manually come over here myself.
I now proceed to get all caught up.
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