We are scheduled to close on our house on Monday at noon, or are we? Since the report of my wife Pat's death to Social Security It may change.

WHAT? Pat is dead??

No not really. Buying a home as most everyone knows involves a lot of paper work, and paper shuffling, and paper pushers. Our mortgage company was in the final stages of wrapping everything up last week for the closing, when they did a normal input of our social security numbers to make sure we are who we say. (Identity theft you know.)

So when Pat's number was put in, the bells and red flags started showing up!! I got a call Friday at 4pm to inform me of my wife being reported as deceased. There is a thing called the Death Master File, where when someone dies, it is reported to the Social Security office and the name and information is added to the list. Well credit bureaus and anyone with the money can subscribe to have access to this list, such as banks, and mortgage companies. So everything came to a screeching halt, and seeing how it was Friday at 4pm the Social Security office was closed. And to make matters worse, we were looking at a three day weekend, Monday being Labor Day.

So all weekend long Pat is besides her self, I told her to relax and start acting like the dead woman she was. She didn't see the humor in it.

Tuesday morning the SS office opens at 9am, so we get there at 8:30 am. There is already a line forming. So we stand in line, wait for the doors to open, (good thing the guard has a pistol on the belt or there would have been a stampede!) and we all file in get our number and wait. I was certain that we would be there a while, our number was 23. The very first number they call is number 6. Number 6? What the hell happened to 1 to 5?

After about 15 minutes our number is called. We sit down on the other side of the Plexiglas window, (yeah plexiglas, just like in a bank) and talk to the lady behind the window. She took pats ID's brought the computer screen up, and told us the good news. Pat was alive. Duhhh I knew that.

She types up a letter, explaining that everything is normal, she is active on the SS files, and to re-check the info on the other end.

I gave a copy of the letter to the Mortgage company and think that was easy. WRONG!!

Thursday I find out that the Mortgage process is being held up because some idiot at 5pm on Wednesday, couldn't get in contact with the lady who wrote the letter to verify that it is authentic! Duhhhh the office closes at 4pm just like it says on the letter!!

Last night at 10pm I received a call from our Mortgage guy who informed me that everything is back on track, and that today, Friday, they will see if they can get the closing time reset to a later time monday, like 3 pm or so. We were scheduled for noon, but they want to move it back just to play it safe.

All I can say is I am glad this is the last house I buy.