Friday, October 5, 2012

A.K.A.

Mike said I needed to sit down and write even if I was tired.  Can't a tired woman just go to bed on a Friday night?  He's in bed.  Nick's in bed.  I worked hard enough today.  Don't I deserve it too? 

Earlier, Mike opened a bottle of sparkling cider that we had leftover from New Years.  I know exactly why he did that. 

A guy came to the house tonight.  Mike opened that bottle to make it look like he was casually having a glass of wine after dinner.

Here's the truth.  After this guy left, Mike made himself a meatloaf sandwich because I wasn't so organized as to have anything good for dinner afterward, let alone before this meeting.  I did manage to put cheese, crackers, and summer sausage on the table for the meeting because we were all starving.  Is it a faux pas to serve summer sausage in autumn?  The man was appreciative.  Nick and I ended up eating cheese, crackers, and summer sausage for dinner instead of having leftover meatloaf after the man left the house.

The man wasn't really someone we had to impress either. Yet....

He was a notary.  He'd come to notarize our refinance papers.  The whole thing didn't take long, but it didn't quite work out the way we'd all planned either. 

The good part was that he was a nice guy and was trying to help.  The bad part was that they'd gotten my middle initial wrong on every single page of the paperwork and after a lot of back and forth, I decided that I didn't want to have an 'A' for my middle initial, even as an AKA, which form the man had, but which wasn't filled out properly since I don't technically have an AKA. 

The problem is that the AKA version of my name that happened to be on all these forms is the same name as someone who got a collections agency chasing after her.  They put it on my credit report, but I managed to get them to take it off just because my middle initial is different.  It isn't 'A.'  It helped that our birthdays were different as well.  Did you know that collection agencies can just use your same name and put it on a semi-random credit report without checking if it's really you, your middle initial, your birthday, your address, and your social security number?  So if you're among 100,000 Jane A Smiths out there, watch out for the one who doesn't pay her bills.  Personally, I don't want to have the same AKA as a woman who almost ruined my credit rating. 

Besides, the man said they'd be all over him if he let me sign the paperwork using the wrong name.  That's good enough for me.  So dude, why were you asking me if I wanted to sign it using the wrong name anyhow?  It's because everyone was already tired and just wanted this problem to go away.

The question remains whether or not the refinance we did thirteen years ago was done with my correct name or with my AKA.  I don't remember.  I do know that I wouldn't have liked signing the wrong name, but I'm not sure I would have fought the pressure if it had been there.  A ream of legal paper with an incorrect name peppered throughout might be pressure enough.  A conference room with four people wishing you didn't want to actually read this contract is almost enough to pop the bubble that is my head.  I would not stand up to interrogation techniques.  I can tell you that.  If these people had told me to sign my name as Iggy J. Poppers, I might have done it.

The problem is that now we're up against the deadline the mortgage company set for themselves and us and it'll all have to be redone and signed.  To make matters worse, it just might be mistyped on our deed.  The whole thing is going to burn up and blow away if we don't get this paperwork signed by Monday, but we don't have the correct paperwork.  We can't be the ones to fix this problem.  Does that mean that we still owe the mortgage company the $4364.09 for processing all this incorrect paperwork if they don't get fresh copies to us by Monday, copies with my real name on them? 

No, there are no days that can just be ordinary and run smoothly. 

And to think I spent a couple of hours today cleaning my house for this, only to find out I'm going to have to clean it again when the mortgage company finally gets their act together.

What's in a name?

Thank you for listening, jb

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