This is what adoption makes you feel like sometimes. :)When you adopt anything and everything WILL happen to try and keep that adoption from taking place. Satan attacks you if you will. Things will tear up around your house that have worked perfectly. They will work perfectly the day before you start your adoption and then they will tear up the day after. Even physically things will happen. With Grace's adoption I lost an organ. Why should it be any different with Lyla's? But that's another blog installment. :) This story takes the prize of the all time wierdest things that has EVER happened to me. Literally.
I was at work and about to go in session with a client when my cell phone rang. I almost didn't answer it because it said, "816". But alas, I answered it anyway. The lovely lady on the other end said, "Mam, this is agent (insert name) with the Department of Homeland Security and I'm looking for someone who goes by the name of Paige Betterton." Um. Come again? Agent? Someone who GOES by the name of? I assured her I was the person she was looking for and gave her the correct email address. She assured me that in 5 minutes I would recieve an email and that I needed to respond accordingly. By this point I am LATE going in to session with my client so the blasted email just had to wait. Thankfully, it was my last client of the day so when all was said and done and I opened up the email I was confronted with the realization that my country was accusing me of using an alias. Apparently, my name was not legally changed when I got married. 10 YEARS AGO!!!!! Tons of questions started going through my mind and I called her back and asked her how this wasn't caught when we left the country 4 years ago when we went to adopt Grace. She didn't have a clue!!!!! HA! Well, after I assured her that every piece of legal documentation that I possessed had my now known alias on it, including my passport, she changed my name in the computer. (She didn't believe that I had a passport in this name. I actually had to email her a color copy of it.) I wasn't really comfortable with the fact my Department of Homeland Security didn't catch that I had an alias 4 years ago. And I'm kind of aggravated that I didn't know it! I might could have gotten away with something! There was no way I was leaving American soil with this up in the air. SO......you will ALL be pleased to know (as well as I was after my slight identity crisis) that my name has now been legally changed thanks to $22 bucks and Doug Bachuss of Nowlin and Associates. Always good to be friends with a lawyer. It helps that he's adopted 2 kids. For some reason.....he wasn't surprised at all that I was going by an alias....hmm.....stay tuned for the next and hopefully last crazy adoption story!
