mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

social insecurity

TAKE A NUMBER

I took a personal day recently and I did not spend it in any of my top-twenty first-choice ways. (On the list: enormous nap/enormous reading-in-bed, making a lasagna from scratch including the noodles, private karaoke room with a ‘90s gangsta-rap playlist, taking a book to a quiet daytime old-man bar and drinking fourteen Old Styles.) Instead I spent 2 hours of it at the Social Security office! The reason was more gender paperwork, as it is my fondest wish that there be nothing outstanding regarding this business by the time Aaron turns 18. I will do everything in my motherly power to ensure he will be able to launch himself further out into the universe with no lingering bullshit.

One thing that internationally adopting and then having a child transition has done for me: I am becoming a real pro at this kind of document-wrangling. I should write up some tips and tricks and put them online. One thing I can tell you right now, for free (LOL, every single thing I have ever told you is for free)—a US passport is the key that unlocks a lot of other shit. Get one for your kid ASAP, it’s the most useful ID they will ever have. If you need to change names on a whole bunch of documents, passport office should be stop #2 after you have the court order. (And about that court order, I’m convinced it’s worth it to have a lawyer help you—there is lots of advice online about do-it-yourself name-changing but we got a fast court date and our asses saved from a scheduling mistake by virtue of our lawyer knowing the judge. Pay the money! Call Saul!) (Or rather, call someone good at family law.)

Anyway, on my day off I went to the gym and then bopped on down to the Social Security office, timing it to be there right when it opened (9 am). I arrived at 9:08 and I know this from my parking app, which I conservatively (so I thought) had loaded up with 30 minutes worth of parking. HA HA HA HA HA. There were literally 100 people ahead of me once I got a number, so there must have been a line at the door just like at an all-ages show at the Metro. I got to witness 2 full-scale meltdowns from my fellow citizens. One resulted in a very dramatic flinging of papers at the window and a storming out (the employee at that window is my absolute hero for taking a long, ennui-heavy slurp of her Dunkin’ Donuts iced coffee and then calling the next number). The other was some old lady who I guess had A Problem Too Complex for the service window and was called to the back office; when the security guard sensibly asked to take a look in her bag before she waltzed into a government office she started yelling about how humiliating that was. I guess she doesn’t go to the airport very often.

That security guard was another saintly human who respectfully explained that it wasn’t meant to be humiliating, it’s a safety policy, etc etc blah blah while she shrieked and sprayed spittle in his direction. Dear World: I recommend you never ever EVER give me a badge or a nightstick or any kind of peacekeeping authority because I have a feeling I would go full jackbooted thug—not in a violent way but more in a “we are not doing this” way. I would throw people like her out of everywhere. I would march people out to the street the minute they started acting the fool. There would be lawsuits about me. I know the Social Security office isn’t very fun but adults need to learn how to hold it together.

STATE OF THE FEELS

Speaking of the kid, I am already thinking about summer, and am torn between encouragement/insistence that he apply for various programs, internships, and experience-providing “jobs,” or just signing him up for lots of time at the woodshop, the pottery studio, weeks of chilling at home, being my clean-the-house elf while I work, and playing guitar for hours. Maybe I’m projecting because lately I have been a thousand percent OVER IT when it comes to my career,* but you have your whole life to be productive and gobble up accomplishments like a good little Pac-Man. Maybe take one last summer for creativity and loafing about because soon enough summer will mean jack shit.

*Supposedly I will have been 25 years at my workplace (not my exact job, but my workplace) this year. That is a bit of creative accounting on their part as it seems I got partial credit for the period of time when I quit and fucked off to the Middle East on my husband’s fellowship and spent a year violating the terms of my “housewife” visa by working for cash at an advertising agency. I’ll take the anniversary, though. I was told to choose a longevity “gift” worth five hundred dollars and because I listen to everything Natalie Dee says I bought myself that insanely expensive hair dryer. Owning it makes me feel gross in a Monopoly-Man capitalist way but gee my hair smells looks terrific.

A friend of mine tried to give me shit for being Gen-X and yet anachronistically staying at the same company for so long like a 1950s dad but my job situation has never been irretrievably broken so I have never fixed it. Sorry for getting promoted a whole bunch, dude. You smell a tiny bit envious of my unbroken tedium. I will admit that right now I am in a mode of WHY WHY WHY MUST I WORK WHY MUST MY LIFE BE SO CONSTRAINED but that is more about working in general (because the last time I was unemployed for more than a few months was like…1988?) than it is about my particular work situation.

COME ON SPRING

After all that California-map-studying and Twitter crowd-sourcing, LT found cheap tickets to London for spring break so: new plan! We will do museums and formal gardens and save redwoods and tacos for the summertime. If there is a summertime. Ever.

—mimi smartypants: those disco synthesizers, those daily tranquilizers.