Family

Squirreling Away

The Merfett

This morning when I pulled into the driveway, on my way home from the gym I saw something odd…well, more odd that usual. We have a very large, and very well fed squirrel population in Burbank. It’s seriously nuts (pun intended) how many of them we have living around our property. Our parkway is lined with several very old and large pine trees. This we’ll call the squirrel compound. It’s their hub, base camp and home.

Often you’ll see them chasing each other around the trunk of the trees harassing on another. They’ll venture down from the complex when in need of a meal or when they feel like playing chicken with cars passing in the street – for some reason the squirrel wins every time. For meals they enjoy snacking in the mulberry tree in our backyard. We’ll call this the commissary. They get pretty picky about letting others into their dining hall and you’ll hear them screaming at each other when an intruder has happened upon their favorite eats. Turns out they not only like mulberry’s but they also like these…

What is that you ask? I have no idea, I was hoping you could tell me.

When I pulled into the driveway this morning I noticed a squirrel trotting down the sidewalk on his way to the complex. Normal. Then I saw the lime green ball in it’s mouth. Hm. Not so normal. At first I thought it was a tennis ball. Huh, so they’re learning to play fetch now, cool.

Later when I was watering the front yard I discovered this:

What the what?! They’re using my garden at their personal pantry!

Sneaky.

Family

Back In Action!

The Merfett

So, I decided to switch my blog over to WordPress from Tumblr. Me likey.

Tumblr just wasn’t doing it for me anymore. I felt like it became more complicated the simpler they made it.

So, I put on my big girl blogging panties and moved the whole enchilada here! Bam.

Now it’s themerfett.wordpress.com…maybe someday I’ll pay the extra money for themerfett.com when I’m felling rich and sassy.

I’m making a resolution to blog daily, DAILY. It may be silly, pointless, mind numbingly boring (most likely) but I’m gonna do it! You don’t have to read it, I know you have more important things to do than hear about how I clipped my dogs toenails today (boring, I warned you).

I’m going to put my Nikon to good use, and share more information that I should with strangers. Hey, that’s why we have the internet right?! No? Oh, bummer.

– The Merfett

regular

Logistics of being a MRS

The Merfett

I’m changing my last name – well, legally I already did. And I have the Marriage certificate to prove it! It’s fun to have the same last name as Manfriend, but it’s also a lot of work to change everything over <— People don’t talk about that part.

I started with the easy, obvious (and socially most important one) changing my name on Facebook. Because we all know if it’s not “facebook official” it didn’t really happen. I accomplished that one pretty easily – FB likes to change their settings just often enough to confuse the crap outta me so I had to hunt in my settings for a bit before I found it. 

Then, based on this article from The Knot (if you’re engaged and you’re not reading the Knot – get on that right now sister) I started with my Social Security Card. In Burbank we are fortunate enough to have a SS Office just down the street from our house. I was kind of dreading this one…uh, government docs = scary. But it was so simple – I was out of there in less than 30 min and there was practically zero wait time. I recommend filing out the form online ahead of time, it makes the process that much quicker. I received my knew card in the mail as few days ago.  But what do I do with my old card? I’m thinking I’ll keep it since I can’t think of a better option. 

I also changed my email signature for work and personal. I have a new email address since my old one includes my maiden name, I just haven’t started using it yet – it’ll happen. 

I mailed off the Health Insurance form to be added to Manfriend’s awesome insurance. Motion Picture Health is one of the greatest perks of being married to a teamster, only 2nd to the free key chains from the union office. 

I’ve filled out the form to update my Passport – but I’m not so excited about the $110 fee, especially since we don’t have any current plans to travel out of the country. Hm, maybe I can wait on that one?

Still remaining are trips to the DMV (or AAA in our case) to update my DL and registration. I should get that done this week. 

Once I have my new DL I can start making the rounds to the banks and get my accounts and cards updated. My checks still list my address as my parents – oops, should probably change that. 

And finally, I need to keep practicing my new signature. It’s so strange to not sign Beintema after Daniella. I think I’ve found a signature that’ll work – but I need to practice so it doesn’t look like a 6 year old wrote it.