Insanity...

As many people being parents would surmise, my greatest concern about moving to California has been the need to get Stephen into a good school because he is so intelligent, and education has always been paramount in my book.'

Well, getting him into a good school has been a pain. Ideally, we wanted him in with Dave's sister's kids at Lincoln in the Clovis School District. Clovis by far has the best upper educational institutions, and some of the better K-6 schools, as well. That fell through. We will not put Stephen in our local school in Coarsegold, Rivergold Elementary, because it has some of the most dismal ratings for its demographic in the state. So, we asked to "live" at Dave's parents' house to get into a particular school. Turns out they fall too far south to be in the district line (my god, right?!) and so we fall into another good school district. It's just trying to figure out where he's going that is giving me kittens--I want to make sure he's going to be successful, I'm not just moving into another Oregon City SD.

So, that taken care of (more or less) means time to get shots, birth certificate, and new social security card (ours were stolen years ago in my wallet.) I did this vitalchek.com thing through the dept. of vital stats for Oregon State--and it looked like it would cost 12.50 more than I would pay going in to the actual office. Ok, no worries. Anyone who has been to the office probably feels as I do, that the 12.50 extra is well worth avoiding standing in line, waiting to have requests filled and called, etc. So I get to the paying part--12.50 for expedited processing. 20.00 to have it "shipped!" Are you shitting me? It costs 20.00 to have some state employee take 5 minutes to meter it and then put it in a mail sack?! I think not. I must be paying hourly wage for the mail person, too. It's a racket. Guess I'm just going to up and take the bus in (ugh!!) and do my time waiting. I am not going to pay 32.50 more to handle and ship my document--it's more than the document costs, total! (20.00)

Anyway, if anyone knows of a place to get really really cheap boxes? Pass the info along. The cost of boxes to move is depressing me.