Quest For the Card...

***Update*** Her card came today! Is that a record for the fastest service by the US Government?


I mustered up my courage and took all of Katie's documents to the local Social Security Office today to get a SSN for her. What an extravaganza. I had a 30 minute search for parking only to find out that everything is metered and I had no coins on me. I then had to find a store to break a 20 to be told they could only give me $2 in quarters - that was the limit per change request - Grrrrrr. Hoping that would be enough time I sped back to the Federal Building, another 10 minute search for parking and plopped in my quarters for a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes of metered time.

It's 10 am and my quest started at 9. One hour of wasted time so far... I finally make it into the Federal Building and wait in line for security to search everyone. Finally! 20 minutes of waiting in line and I put my purse thru and alarms start buzzing. "Ma'am, Do you have a cell phone in your purse?" "Yes Sir, I do." " You are forbidden to have cell phones in a Federal Building and you will need to step out of line and take it back to your car immediately."

WHHHHHAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!! Crikey! As Steve Irwin would say. I ran back to my car, which I'm in no shape to be doing and rush back to stand in line again. There goes 40 minutes of my allotted 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I actually got into the SSA office, there were hundreds of people there. I thought there was NO way I was going to be called anytime soon but I took a number and sat down. 1 hour and 15 minutes later my number was called to go stand in another line.

A young Chinese couple were behind me and saw my documents in Chinese and the woman asked me why I had them. I told her we adopted a baby from China. She smiled and thanked me over and over again for doing that. She asked many questions about the process and how we decided China was where we wanted to adopt from and in the end asked me what I knew about Katie's birth parents. I told her we knew nothing and that she was found abandoned at an orphanage gate. She began to cry and apologized to me. She said that she had been born in a very poor rural area in Southern China. She was the youngest of 4 children and that her parents could not afford to take care of her so they gave her to another Chinese family. She said she thinks the families must have been connected in some way but her adoptive parents will not tell her anything about it. We continued to talk and found out that we both had lived in the same small town in Tennessee at one point. That was just amazing to me. What are the chances of us meeting in the Social Security office with two life experience connections? It really is a small world!

Ok... back to the wait. At 12:05 I was called to the window and luckily got the manager of the whole office as my attendant. She took the Certificate of Citizenship, foreign birth certificate, immunization record and adoption decree and my ID, 3 minutes of typing her card was requested! Whoooohoooo! I made it back to my car with 13 minutes to spare. One challenge down, now on to the re-adoption and passport lines!