It's Enough to Make a Person Go Postal

If it weren't for the wonderful cards and gifts that keep arriving for Natalie, I swear I would just stop picking up the mail. Practically every day we get another piece of bureacratic pestilence in our mailbox. Today's reduced me to a quivering, sobbing lump.

Shortly after she was born, we began to receive form letters from our insurance company for Natalie's medical claims (her birth and three pediatrician appointments to date), saying she wasn't listed as a dependent and that if she were not added to the policy within 45 days, they would refuse payment on the claims. However, the insurance company insists that they have to be notified by my employer before they will add her and my employer is adamant that we have to submit her birth certificate and Social Security number before they will enroll her. The insurance company says dependents must be added within 45 days of birth; HR says you have up to 60 days. In any case, we have yet to receive either a birth certificate or a Social Security number for her, but we get the form letters 2-3 times a week.

You may recall that a few weeks before Natalie's arrival, the I*R*S sent me a charming missive challenging my first time homebuyer deduction in 2003. Yesterday, the DC government sent an inquiry to both Cait and me, debating our Homestead deduction. Unless Cait has a tropical island getaway she's not telling me about, this *IS* our sole and primary residence and we *ARE* entitled to the deduction, but we now have to jump through hoops to prove it.

Today's mail brought TWO doozies. First, the I*R*S has decided that my 2003 return was incorrect, so I owe them more than $5,500 in back taxes, interest, and penalties. Given that I had a baby in the middle of the 30 days when I was supposed to dredge up the documentation for my 2003 filing, I was a little late (3 days) sending them my proof of ownership, so hopefully I can get this straightened out in the end. But it's NOT what I want to be doing during my short time home with Natalie.

Second, we got a letter from the midwives informing us that DC Vital Records has rejected Natalie's birth certificate application saying that her last name must be my maiden name unless we list her father's name on the birth certificate. DC has a ridiculous law that babies can only have their mother or father's last name. The ENTIRE reason I rushed the name change through before she was born was so that she could have Cait's last name from birth (by making it MY name too). Not only does this infuriate me because we can't give our child the name we want (yet - don't think we won't be fighting this) but it also compounds the difficulty of getting her on the insurance because the birth certificate info hasn't even been filed yet, 28 days into the 45 or 60 day countdown.

Makes a mailbox full of credit card offers, catalogs, and political flyers seem downright heartwarming, doesn't it?