Secret Identity

Most of you probably don't know that for the past 8 years I've been living under a secret identity. Most of you know me by the name Stephanie Brandt, but to the U.S. government I have been known by a different name -- Stephanie Bramdt.

8 years ago I went to the Social Security office with my marriage license in hand and filled out the proper form to change my last name from "Traudt" to "Brandt." Not that complicated of a job, except for the annoying wait at a government office. When my new Social Security card arrived a few weeks later I saw that my new name was "Stephanie Meg Bramdt." Ugh. I was annoyed but the last thing I wanted to do was drive all the way back to the Brooklyn Center office and wait another hour or two. School was starting and I didn't have a spare day to take care of this during business hours.

So for the past 8 years I have put up with seeing the name Stephanie Bramdt on all our tax forms, all the Social Security mail, etc. It wasn't until 2 days ago when I received a letter from our mortgage company saying the IRS had informed them that the names didn't match up, and that I needed to fill out some form and send it back by December 14 or else. I certainly didn't want to get on the IRS's bad side after we were just audited a month ago. So today I went to the website, downloaded and filled out the change form, typed up a letter explaining what had happened, and put all these things and my marriage license in an envelope. I have a thing with keeping papers and things nice (I didn't want to fold up and send my original and only marriage license in the first place, that's why I personally went down to the social security office in the first place.) 8 years later I apparently no longer care that much about our marriage license, sorry Jer.

So hopefully in the next few weeks my identity will be changed to what it was supposed to be all along -- Stephanie Meg Brandt.