Thing to Do No. 10: Play the "Pregnancy" Card

When the Colonel and I first found out we were having a baby on a snowy February day (at least two years ago, I swear), we took a trip that afternoon to the Kroger near our house. In his excitement, the Colonel pointed to the "New and Expectant Mom" parking and said "Oooh, park there! There's your space." He also pumped my gas for me that day, a lovely favor I haven't seen repeated since. He was mostly joking about the parking space, and I told him I didn't really think it was there for "our kind of pregnant."

Several months later, however, that special spot started looking pretty good, and I'm somewhat embarassed to say that not only do I park there, I also judge harshly the people who park there without justification. A few weeks ago, neither of the "Mom" spots were available at my Kroger, and you better believe that I checked both cars for car seats (1 had one and was therefore "legitimate," and 1 did not, making it suspect). I then checked the grocery store, every aisle, for the telltale pregnant lady waddling along with her forehead on her cart. She wasn't there!

Anyway, I generally prefer to be a "do-it-myself"er, but I have put this pregnancy thing to use a few good times. Yesterday, however, marked the first time I played my trump card and LOST.

I was working at the Paulding County courthouse, performing an arduous and highly specialized task called "running title" or, crassly, "deed dogging." Generally, running title and deed dogging is a moderately simple task requiring special skills of hauling old books, reading deeds, and standing for hours on end, and it's generally done in anticipation of real estate closings. My project was more involved than a typical real estate closing title search because it was more litigation-related. You'll just have to trust me here; if I go into detail, your eyes will glaze over and you might droool on your keyboard.

This type of work requires access to two main things: 1) the deed records of the Clerk of Superior Court; and 2) the tax maps from the Tax Assessor. Since the invention and widespread use of the internet, most courthouses now have the tax maps viewable online from the Deed Room. Not so in Paulding County. In Paulding County, if you want to use the internet to look at deeds, you have to go through security and go to a room in one building. If you want to use the internet to look at maps, you have to leave the first building, bypass security, go to the next building, go through security, go to the third floor, and use the internet over there.

Wait a minute, you are thinking, if you can use the internet, why go to the courthouse at all? Ahh, because the internet deed records only go back to 1990, and I was hoping to go back to approximately 1900, which requires lifting lots of heavy old books. Thus, you need the maps on the internet in the same place as the deed records.

Paulding County doesn't allow this happen. Every time I tried to pull up a map from the deed room, I got a message saying that webpage wasn't accessible without a password. This is the deed-dogging equivalent to having that dream where you know something awesome is about to happen and then you wake up just before it does.

I begged, begged, begged the Clerk of Superior Court (Treva Shelton, you're on the list), the Tax Assessor, and the IT department guy to give me the password. I'm ashamed, but I think I even said, while fighting back tears, "Listen, I'm 8 1/2 months pregnant; I'm tired as hell; and I don't want to schlep this file back and forth between your two buildings all day. Can you please just give me the password?" Typically bureaucratic, they all told me they couldn't help and pointed me to the next person.

I even stopped and cried in between the two buildings at one point. I sent my boss a very rude email insinuating that my frustrations were entirely his fault. I also think that I spent most of the day making an ass of myself and muttering under my breath about backwater Paulding County.