Mrs. G.

I finally got around to the surreal task of legally changing my name this week. I went to the Social Security Administration office at lunch one day. After a few games of wordsearch on my phone, my number got called and I went up to the window. I wasn't really sure how to state my business, so I just pushed my marriage certificate through the space between the glass and the counter. The man behind the glass asked what I was there for. "I need to change my name. I got married so I need to change my last name," I told him. "Married? What'd you go and do that for?" he asked. "He convinced me," I laughed. He paused, looked at me for the first time, then looked back down at his paperwork. "He convinced you with that ring." "That helped." Neither of us said anything more, and less than two minutes later, he handed me back my documents along with another print out, a receipt, if you will, for my new name. Nice to have, but I don't think I'll be returning it any time soon.

Get Off My Lawn!

If you didn't already know that I was now one half of an old married couple, you will now. Last Friday, John and I sat out on our deck after work enjoying some seltzer and talking about our days. Then we heard a noise and saw that some teenagers had gotten onto the roof of the building adjacent to ours by jumping a divider between that building and the top level of the attached parking garage. The noise was them throwing rocks off of the roof onto the piazza below, which is a pretty high pedestrian traffic area. I immediately stood up at the railing and stared at them, waiting for them to notice me and John called our concierge to see if there was anything he could do. Then I sat down when they backed away from the ledge. A few minutes later, though, we heard the noise again- they were back at it. Again I took up my post at the railing. This time one of the looked over at me. "Hi!" I yelled, wanting to make sure they knew there were witnesses. One of the three ran away immediately and another yelled over to us asking if we'd seen what the other kid had done. "I saw you all do it!" John yelled from the other side of our deck. At that they all took off running down the stairs of the parking garage. As that was happening, our concierge came outside, as did a couple employees from the restaurant right below us. John and I both began yelling to them all at the same time "They were on the roof!" "They're running down the stairs!" "They might try to go out the car exit!" "They were throwing rocks, we saw them do it!" I had a healthy exhilaration coursing through my veins. This was the most excitement I'd seen all week. Unfortunately, no one caught the kids, the concierge went back to his desk, the waiters went back into the restaurant, and John and I left for Bed Bath and Beyond to buy hangers...with store credit.