I received my new Social Security card in the mail yesterday--Mouse Hislast Mylast--so the name change is officially complete. FIVE MONTHS LATER. My driver's license now says Mouse H Mylast. I can get on airplanes when the ticket says my name and EVERYTHING. And I will tell you what: it was a pain in the ass, but it feels like the right thing, and I'm happy about it. Hooray! On that note, I invite you to move over to Good Mouse Bad Mouse (newly relocated due to a mean domain claimjumper), where I will be mostly writing from now on. It's been a good run, but this is the end of the wedding-related stuff. xoxoxoxo

P.S. OMG WHAT IS THIS TOTAL NONSENSICAL TRASH MY CLAIMJUMPER IS POSTING?! Ick.

P.P.S. Update from JANUARY 31, 2012: this is how long it took to finish all of the name change bullshit. Done now. But holy crap, that was a process!

Well, micies, there is some good news and there is some bad news in the long chronicle of changing my name back.

Yay: Went to court this morning and got the legal name change done. It took, like, ten minutes once the judge showed up, and he cared NOT AT ALL about my reasons for the change.

Booo: It turns out there are, like, seven billion steps left to go. I have to publish another ad in the paper, send the court another affidavit saying I did so, then I have to obtain copies of the official name change (which cost $10 each) and send them all around everywhere. And only THEN can I start down the long list: Social Security office, DMV, credit cards, etc.

It's definitely going to cost another $100, bringing the total to around $300 so far. Argh, argh, argh.

But at least my name is fixed, now. It's Mouse Hislast Mylast, with Hislast being my middle name, safely relegated to "H" when I want not to be defined by my marriage. Sigh of relief.

So, I haven't been blogging because I am THAT MAD about how hard it is to change your name back once you've already gotten married. My legal name now is Mouse Mylast Hislast, which I am trying to change to Mouse Hislast Mylast. Here's what has happened since my last post about this:

1) Paid $200 to file petition to change my name in New Jersey. I assume this money is going to buy Snooki something.

2) Paid $36 to publish notice of name change, which was worded like this: "Mouse Mylast Hislast has petitioned the court to change her name to Mouse Hislast Mylast" and a thing about turning up in court if you have any problem with this. Who could POSSIBLY have any problem with this?

3) I will tell you who: the New Jersey DMV. On your Driver's License, these are your options:
Mouse Hislast
Mouse M. Hislast
Mouse Mylasthislast
Mouse Mylast-Hislast.
NONE OF WHICH ARE MY LEGAL NAME NOW. I argued with them for a good 15 minutes, but "our software just won't accommodate two last names. It's so unusual." It did not help that this was a snotty man saying it. I left the DMV feeling like he had stolen my name.

4) I will tell you who ELSE: the Department of Homeland Security. My airplane tickets now say Mouse Mylasthislast, because like the New Jersey DMV, they do not have software to accomodate two last names. I should've put "Mylast" as "Middle name," but it ISN'T my midde name. Cue Irate TSA Guy.

Irate TSA Guy: Your ticket doesn't match your federally issued photo ID. (Vein popping out of his neck)

Mouse: Yes, sir. That's because the New Jersey system does not allow two last names in their software, and the airline software smushes the two last names into one name. Here's my credit card. You can see that my name is Mouse Mylast Hislast.

ITG: BUT IT DOESN'T MATCH!!! (ROAR)

Mouse: Yes, sir. But I entered my legal name in each of these circumstances, and this is the identification issued to me from that legal name.

ITG: IF YOU WERE TRAVELING INTERNATIONALLY WE WOULDN'T EVEN LET YOU OUT OF THE COUNTRY! RAAAAAAAWR!

4) I DID get on the plane after all of this, and when I came home, they assigned me two name-change court dates:
a. Ya-Ya's wedding day (of course)
b. Day of really important professional engagement occurring out of town.

5) Filed change of venue motion thing and now the court case is going to the county where I actually live, where hopefully it gets a new court date. Or not. If not, I go back to the beginning and pay another $30.

Moral of the story: if you aren't sure about changing your name, JUST WAIT. You have a whole year to decide. And waiting beats bullshit.

Check written. He-Mouse on board. Delivering the name-change-change documents to the court this afternoon, I hope! If anybody in New Jersey in interested in how to change their names back without hiring a lawyer, I thought I'd share this super-helpful site.

Anybody have other resources like this for your home state? Please share in the comments!

Hi, micies. Long time, no blog! We've made our move to the East Coast, though, and have (mostly) unpacked all of our stuff. Apart from a strong urge to scrap it all and become some kind of monk--holy crap, we have a lot of crap--we're happy and settled.

Which means it's time to really deal with something that has been bothering me for about a year, and is also a hot topic round the blogosphere: name changing. Or not-changing. If you'll recall, I did a big post about this awhile ago, in which I shared my decision to change my name. What I did was drop my given middle name, and take his last name as an additional last name. The change was meant to be legal and social, and I always intended to keep my name professionally (it would cost me about ten years of hard work to change my name professionally).

To recap, my big reason for wanting to change my name was that I wanted to have the same last name as my children. In the beginning, He-Mouse didn't really mind about this one way or the other. He would never call me "Mrs. Hislast," even in a teasing or romantic way. He likes that I took his name, but it was never a priority for him. And because I'm a feminist, we did have a discussion about him taking part of my name--but he decided not to. For these reasons, I really do feel that it's a decision that I, rather than we, need to make.

So I started out:

Mouse Middle Mylast

And became:
Mouse Mylast Hislast,
in which both Mylast and Hislast are last names, with no hyphen.

However, I hit several big hurdle with this right away.

1) First of all, the grand bureaucracy is unbelievably confused by the idea of two last names with no hyphen. I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation:

Me: Hello, my account is under Mouse