It ain't so easy!

Okay...did I say living in America is easy? I think after the last couple of days I have changed my mind! I have been trying to register the kids for school but it hasn't happened yet! We went to Erica's new school the other day and started the process. We got to the form that said something about "proof of residency" and that is where we had to stop. I can't prove that I live in this house! The address on my driver's license is my parent's address since we consider that our permanent stateside address. I don't want to change it and then have to change it back in 3 months. There are no bills in my name. I don't have a lease agreement. I just am. How does this work? On one form I thought about checking the box that said we were living in a temporary shelter. That could include a car or an abandoned building according to the paper. I thought I could say we are living in this abandoned house...that my parents happen to own. Or we are living in our car which is parked in the driveway of a house my parents happen to own. I thought that might cause more problems so instead we went today to get approval from the head honcho on admissions and he said we could go to school. Yea! I was starting to sweat thinking about homeschooling the kids. Instead of going back to finish Erica's school registration we decided to go to the the other kids' school first. We got all of our copies made and then got stuck on the shot records. The nurse did seem a little puzzled when she saw that all of our kids have had rabies shots. She must have been envisioning a pack of rabid dogs attacking us. I explained our situation and we now need to have approval for all of the shots we had before we left. I compiled all of our records onto these nice yellow cards we got from our company but we never had any nurse or doctor sign it. The records aren't valid until I have a doctor sign them. This actually makes sense to me so we went to the old pediatrician office where we discovered that in our 4 1/2 year absence from America our records have been put in storage. Well, all but Will's, but I think we just got lucky there! So we now have to pay $35 per child to have the records pulled so we can get a copy of the shot records in them. We are supposed to go back next week and pick them up and hopefully at that point be able to complete the registration process. One thing I am figuring out is that we are weird. I guess I already knew that, but I never thought so much about it. We don't fit anyone's criteria or into anyone's box. People hear that we are in the states for a few months and don't know what to do with us. Who knew that we would cause such problems just trying to go to school?

On a side note...Will went to the doctor today because he has a cough and hasn't been feeling well. He has a bronchial infection and was given a prescription for an antibiotic. When I took it to the pharmacy the pharmacist asked when I would like to come back to pick up the prescription. I asked her how long it would take to fill it and she said if I wanted to wait it would only be about 15 minutes. I waited. All I could think was I am not coming back later! I haven't accomplished anything at all because I keep having to come back later. I wanted to be able to say that I had at least finished something!