d i n a n e . n e t 

Today was the last day of my mini-vacation. I finally feel well enough to go the day without DayQuil, so my brain is free from interruption. Today was going to be a good day.

I had Mike wake me up early, because the apartment complex people had left a note yesterday telling us that they were turning off the water in our building from 9 to noon today. I like showers that are made from water, not imagination, so I woke up at 8:30. I got my shower, tooth brushing, and other sundry morning activities handled…

[Aside: I finally got fed up with my fracking ‘d’ key. In the last fifteen minutes, I just pulled it off, found a hair wrapped around the rubber post, and plucked it off. That actually took only twenty seconds. The remaining fourteen minutes and forty seconds were spent with me trying to figure out how to reassemble my keyboard. It was like one of those mind bending puzzles. You have to figure out that you first attach part a and b at the joint, then attach part b at the bottom to the computer, then part a at the top to the computer, then the key to part a at the bottom, and finally snap part b to the key at the top. Sproing! Now it works.

Back to the sentence at hand…]

…themselves with two minutes to spare before the strike of nine. I used those last moments to pour myself a cup of water from the Brita and quickly refill the pitcher. I sat down with said water and a bowl of granola for breakfast.

After yet more procrastination (I watched a Good Eats episode I’d already seen), I finally walked myself out the door with manila envelope in hand. I was off to see the wizard! Which one? Well, the wonderful wizard of financial planning, stock trading, bond maturity, and other money things, obviously!

Not obvious?

[Aside the Second: This is the part of the blog entry where I would normally throw in a little bit of a back-story. It would give you some insight into what is going on, let you know what I’m thinking, all that. This fabulous story didn’t go with the expected answer when I asked, “One lump or two,” so you get two back-stories. Lucky you!]

Back-story A: I have always been a professional procrastinator. Even as far back as elementary school, I could put off homework (usually the kind that required multiplying 3 by every number from 1 to 12) until just before bedtime. In middle school, I worked that up to doing homework during homeroom in the morning. By high school, I had perfected the skill of doing homework for sixth period during fifth. So, any time I have to do anything that annoys me in any way, I put it off. Finances annoy me. So I put the dealing with them off.

Back-story B: My grandparents were super-awesome in more than just one way. But I won’t delve into every facet of their awesomeness today, because I like to keep my entries slightly shorter than The Iliad. The relevant awesomeness has my grandparents giving me bonds when I was a child that have recently been maturing. This is a fabulous idea. The first one matured just shortly after I graduated college, and could not have possibly come at a better time.

So, anyway, I have these bonds. And they’ve been doing nothing but sitting in an envelope for months. Okay, years. And my dad’s been on my case at every opportunity. I finally promised (and I don’t break promises) to “go to Fidelity” (a phrase that has been ringing in my ears, in my dad’s voice) during my week off between jobs.

Of course, that means I waited until the last day of my week off.

Off I went, on my journey eastward, to Fidelity. I was nervous. I had no idea what I was doing. Luckily, they were nice people. I met with two different people, and set up an account. All good, right? Wrong. I had only brought the photocopies of the bonds with me. They needed the real thing.

After some shopping, some lunch, an entertaining moment at the ice cream store, and some frantic searching around my house and my parents’, I found them in their little envelope under the coffee table (because, of course that’s where valuable things should be kept… idiot Diane!). I was excited and got right back in my car and drove the twenty-minute drive back. The same guy I had opened my account with was standing at the counter. Yay!

I showed him the bonds, we talked with the other girl I had talked to this morning, and everything came to a screeching halt. “Do you have your birth certificate?” I offered my passport, thinking that it would obviously suffice, seeing as it is a more trustworthy…

[Miniature Aside: Word wanted me to change that to “trustworthier,” which I did. I changed it back when it told me that “trustworthier” is not a word…]

…document. She went into the back office to ask if that would do. Meanwhile, I signed my name nine times, and account-opening-guy filled out some forms. “We have to have your birth certificate. That’s the only way that the company that we’ll turn the papers in to will accept that you are no longer a minor.” (The bonds are, of course, made out in custody to my Mom.)

I was baffled. I babbled a bit about how I had needed the birth certificate to get the passport, but she didn’t seem to care. Well, that’s not true. She cared, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. So I called my parents, and we discussed faxing it. But it turns out that even that would not be enough. They need the physical birth certificate, damn it.

Oye.

So now, I’ll be getting my birth certificate from my dad this weekend, and I’ll have to spend time while I’m at work going to the Fidelity branch in Boston. I’m thinking I might do it first thing on Monday, since the new job doesn’t need me until 9, the Fidelity office opens at 8, and I’m more or less a morning person (when I don’t have the death plague).

I muttered, “Damn it,” under my breath several times as I drove home. I’m annoyed. In what crazy world is a passport not good enough documentation of one’s age? Ugh!