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Gabriel is now the proud new owner of the much coveted United States social security number. It will be nice for him to have one so he can never collect on any social security taxes he will ever pay. This normally would not be a blog worthy occasion except that obtaining this number was a fun filled morning.

He could have had one a super long time ago but doing it right required going to Trenton which I really did not want to do. So we bit the bullet (almost literally) and spent the morning on Tuesday in Trenton.

I tried to do it through the mail but when I forgot to send something, they sent me my stuff back and also sent me SOMEONE ELSE'S birth certificate. After that I decided I could not trust original documents to the federal employees at the Trenton social security office. So last December I decided to get Gabriel his passport first and the people at the State Department in Philadelphia must be more intelligent because it only took 2 weeks to get that done. And he has quite a nice passport photo too.

The Trenton office moved (without telling anyone) so I drove around Trenton, 3 blocks from the prison, for about 25 minutes till I just decided to park and wander around. That was fun. I had Gabriel strapped into the stroller and Sylvia was sleeping. I found it. A large room filled with very interesting looking people. They were on number 42 and I took number 63. I thought, wow, I might not have enough cookies to last until they call number 63 as there were only 2 people working there. I was sure Gabriel would be a problem so I parked our train in the back. Not too long after we got there, some interesting looking young men arrived and were asked by security to leave. One made his way back in and said, as he was sitting down right behind me, that he had a gun and was going to shoot everyone in the room. A very frail older man sitting in front of me, turned around very politely and said, if you have a gun would you please leave. Security soon thereafter removed this interesting young man from the room. He said he would be back later. I was hoping he could come back after number 63. There were quite a few people there with coats large enough to stash an assault weapon or two.

We waited a little over an hour. Gabriel was running in circles trying to make himself dizzy. He was successful. He was talking to another very interesting young man in front of us, showing him his wet and dirty fingers that had just been in his mouth.

After number 63 was called, no one was in the stroller, we got over to the window when I must have lost track of Gabriel because security called over to me, "Miss" motioning to the toddler who was racing amongst all the interesting people at light speed. He was quickly strapped down despite complaints. He then politely asked for a juice box.

It was tons easier to do it in person, I was expecting a detailed document inspection and I was ready but apparently the document inspection was not necessary. Wow, I hope he got a lucky number.