Monday 7 June 2010

I'm the king of the day

My birthday.  One year older on paper and the paper is getting older by the minute. Thankfully I still look fantastic and feel young (ish).  L'Oreal for men can do wonders.  I really can't believe that so many years have gone by, but I guess time flies when you are having fun.  Funnily enough, I haven't met the midlife crisis yet and I'm not too sure what to look out for either.

Our oldest daughter, who's now 6 years old, was so excited that my birthday had finally arrived. She started to give me clues the day before as to what I was getting - without telling me what it was of course.  Over my left shoulder, I could sense my wife trying to use the Jedi mind trick to persuade our daughter not to reveal anything, but she failed miserably.  My daughter either completely ignored the gestures or didn't fall for the feeble mind trick.  By the time the kids had gone to bed, I had some ideas as to what I might expect to see underneath the wrapping paper;
  • A goodie bag from a party my daughter was at two days earlier
  • Something to do with a light saber
  • An outdoor toy on a string
  • A tissue with dried nostril fluids
  • Several kisses and hugs from all members of my hobbit family
... and of course the mandatory birthday song singing as a wake-up call.  All in all, I was in for a heck of a surprise and birthday celebration.

As usual, I was off to bed around 21.30 (9.30pm), to catch a bit of shut-eye before the big day.  I'm on the early feeding shift, so I need my beauty sleep.  Well, beauty sleep is wasted on me, as I can't get any prettier. I'm not 20 anymore and I need at least 6 hours sleep.  To my absolute surprise and delight, my 2 month old daughter, who has been waking up at 4am every morning, decided to wake up at 6am this morning. It was fantastic.  She allowed me to sleep in.  What a little star.  We went down stairs, where she had her bottle and I had mine, all while watching the first series of CSI Las Vegas.


Shortly before 7am, I was summoned by my daughter to come back to my bed, so they could wake me up singing, and give me my presents.  I went upstairs and pretended to sleep while the family prepared the birthday morning ritual.  My daughter is the only person who can actually hold a note and sing. She was singing Happy Birthday in three languages; English, Spanish and Irish - amazing or what?  Both my wife and I are strong contenders for the X-factor outtakes, so the missus was merely humming something that sounded like the theme song from "Sound of Music"(out of tune), and gave me a big kiss.  Our son completely disengaged after the first few words of the song and handed me the remote for the TV.  I love these little rituals that we have. They make you realise that you have a loving and caring family.


Anyway, that day I was the king, the president, the dictator and the ruler of mi casa, all rolled up into one person.  Heck, that's a deal we have all agreed to in my little family.  Whoever has a birthday can decide everything ... well, sort of.  I was delighted that it was finally my day to decide what to do, eat and watch.


Hang on, who am I kidding?


I'm the lowest step on the family ladder.  Even my 2 month old daughter decides more than I do.  Let me be clear, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  I'm more than delighted to serve my family, as long as I get a bit of loving in return, which I do.  Besides, I can still pretend to be king, in my mind.  Nothing wrong ever came of developing a fantasy and playing.  That was why I went off to play with Lego to build my own kingdom.


Later in the day the in/out-laws stopped by to see us, mainly to see the kids of course. We had a lovely birthday chocolate cake (with cream and strawberries in the middle) that my wife had made.  Shortly after the cake had been eradicated (no traces left), it was decided that we watch Avatar - all while I did the dishes and started to prepare dinner.


I had a nice and relaxed day.  I had the day off work. We were stuck inside due to torrential rain.  I got some nice presents, especially the three day old goodie back from my daughter and her drawing saying "I luv yuo dad".

Just because you are one year older doesn't mean that you are wiser - at least not in my case.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Married to be divorced...

...just to get our newborn registered!  That's exactly what we almost had to do.

As you might have read in some earlier blogs, my beautiful wife gave birth to an almost as beautiful daughter five weeks ago. When that happens you need to get the child registered.  That's fairly standard across the World. It will allow you to apply for a passport - obviously and it also helps if you want to get child benefit.

I still think it is silly to give kids below the age of four their own passport.  In all honesty, a baby's face changes a lot in the first 12 months alone. So, the child/baby could get arrested or could be denied entry.  Even my face as an adult changes from time to time. That's mainly because I'm getting a little more roundfaced as I'm getting older.  Sometimes my face changes as well when I attempt to grow facial hair, although I still cannot grow a full beard.  My late dad always made fun of this, and he probably still does.

One morning, after having dropped off the two eldest kids at their schools, the rest of the von Trap family journeyed into the local council office to get our newest member registered.  My wife was, as always, well prepared and had all the usual certificates copied and folded neatly in an envelope.  That should make the process quicker - we thought.  We handed the envelope to the civil servant sitting behind the greasy class partition and she "quickly" started the process.  Just as we were waiting for the document to be stamped and processed, the civil servant said that our wedding certificate was no longer valid. WTF!  I calmly explained to the numbskull that we had used the same certificate to register our two other kids, where to she said "well, that was before January 1 2007, right?" Church certificates are no longer valid, we were told. And, this comes from a country that has been manipulated and run by the Catholic church for centuries!  The only option, she said, was to get a civil marriage certificate or the wedding certificate legalised by the government/country we were married in.  That just made it so much easier ... NOT!

When we came home, I contacted my embassy, only to discover that this rule had indeed been agreed by most European countries to prevent fraud and human trafficking.

I then contacted the foreign affairs office in Denmark and discovered that I had to get our wedding certificate renewed, as they only accept certificates that are less than 4 months old.  FFS, this just got worse.

At this point, we seriously considered getting married in city hall, in Ireland, in our swim wear, (I in my speedos and my wife in her bikini) just to get this famous certificate.  Just one minor problem...we had to get divorced to get married.  And, in order to get a new certificate, I had to go to a Danish church, IN Denmark.

For personal reasons, I had to go to Denmark, so I brought the famous wedding certificate with me in order to get it upgraded.  My path would cross another civil servant again - damn it - this time disguised as a "friendly" clerk in the church office.  She turned out to be just as helpful as a kitchen sifter emptying a bucket full of water.

She could not find our certificate on the computer, despite it being the church where we got married. She then said my wife would have to come to Denmark too to get registered as a resident.  Interesting!  Do they suggest that we leave our newborn alone in Dublin? Remember, you can't travel without a passport, and to get a passport you need a birth certificate... Alright,  I've always tried to be diplomatic and understanding, but in this case I had to tell the lady a few truths about the IT systems they were using and her inability to provide alternative solutions.  These were truths the church haven't heard since the dark ages (the language of mordor), letting my dark side shine through.  Obviously, it didn't help at all and I was no further in my quest to get our daughter registered.

My dear mum heard my heartfelt story and stepped in to help her son.  Within 40 minutes, she had secured me a new wedding certificate and processed the payment to get the document legalised.  Now we just had to get the certificate legalised by the Danish Foreign Office, and pay to have this done of course ... I even had to pay for the postage stamp to send the certificate back to me!

Within 7 working days, the "new" certificate arrived.  It looked exactly like the one I sent them, with the only difference that it now had a small A5 sized stamp on the back.  Hopefully the Irish civil servants accept this one.  Something tells me that they will be looking for something else, e.g. video footage of the wedding, letter from priest, blessing for local parish priest - anything to delay the process further.

We can only keep our fingers crossed, hoping everything is in order, so we can get our daughter registered and get her a passport.  We are relying on civil servants.. Lord have mercy on us.

... and they didn't accept the new marriage certificate!
The legalized and stamped certificate arrived as promised. We travelled far distances across town to get our daughter registered.  Yes, back to the house of evil civil servants and their medieval processes.

My wife joined the queue and were soon face-to-face with a glazed looking male.  He starred at the newly stamped certificate, with the Danish seal on it, and passed it back ."No good!".  "It doesn't state it's a CIVIL Marriage certificate." he said. My diplomatic wife attempted for a long time to remind the civil supervisor muppet that we had done EXACTLY what they asked us to do. She also suggested that he should contact the Danish embassy since they were not accepting the Danish Foreign Affairs office stamp.  We should have known that he wasn't going to be of any help, so I contacted the Danish embassy instead, hoping they would be able to assist.

BTW, we did ask the question if we could re-marry to get this process completed, whereto the civil drone said we would be breaking the law! We would have to get divorced first to remarry. However, we could also be charged for tax fraud since we have been registered as married for years which means we have been taxed as a married couple... But, he wasn't following the legal EU directive himself!

So, I persuaded the assistant ambassador to write a letter to the Uber-clone, stating that our wedding certificate in fact was a legal civil document.  We just received that letter and now we just have to see if that letter is good enough as well.  All these obstacles just to get our daughter registered!

My wife went to the registration office, again, walked up to the hatch and spoke to the same "helpful" civil servant again.  She showed him the legal wedding certificate (again), the birth confirmation form from the hospital (again) and the newly acquired letter from the embassy.  Drumroll please.

Believe it or not, we finally managed to get her registered.  3rd time lucky as they say.  Now, off to the passport office. Let's hope they are not on strike!

There and back again, by misses hobbit