wrestling with international marriage paperwork, pet shampoo, and interior design

[cimorene]

• After a year of procrastination, I still haven't gotten our paperwork in order to have our Iowa marriage recognized in Finland. This was actually the whole reason we got married in Iowa - because Finland has registered partnership, but not marriage, and this pisses us off because 1. separate but equal is not equal and 2. they're not equal anyway; it doesn't come with quite all the legal benefits. The point of the whole exercise is that after doing it elsewhere, we get to petition to be legally recognized as married to a Finnish judge of some sort and make our voice heard. Given past precedent, they probably aren't going to recognize it as a marriage (Wax looked at some forums, and Vermont marriages have historical precedent of being declared to be legally only a registered partnership under Finnish law - assholes).
  
  The main reason for the procrastination, though, is that the process is both expensive and fiddly. You can't just give government documents from one country to another, which we didn't find out in advance; if both are signatories of the Hague conventions you need an apostille certificate, which is provided by an entirely separate government office (in Iowa it's the state Secretary of State). Unfortunately, only a certified copy (from a state or county office - these are what you need for in-country intradepartmental proof like legal name changing at the DMV and SSA) can be apostilled, and that arrives in the mail after your wedding. In our case, 15 days after, at which point we were already in Finland. But the thing is, if we'd been able to get it while in the US, we could have taken it to the Sec State in person, paid our fee in cash, and walked away with the certificate. From over here, the only alternative is to mail a certified copy and a money order, because the Iowa Secretary of State doesn't have a mechanism for accepting credit card payments online. Also, I googled a lot (" ") about this and was still ultimately very confused about how to get the apostille in the first place. (Yesterday I finally found a site that laid it out perfectly clearly - not a site provided by the state of Iowa. Their Sec State's website doesn't have a peep about apostilles except in the fee schedule and list of snail mail addresses.)
  
  Also I'm now reasonably certain that I was misled by all my Googling and didn't actually need to order a new certified copy of the marriage certificate, which we did yesterday at a cost of 28 USD, to be shipped to my Dad so he can mail it to the Iowa Sec State with a check for the apostille fee for us. This is cheaper/faster than international postage, but also, Finland does not use checks anymore. That's a lot of bother for my dad as well as 28 bucks wasted. Oops. :( We could have mailed the copy we already have (I thought it was invalid for apostille because it was issued by the county recorder and not the state department of public health & statistics, but I now think that's not true of Iowa; it came from an FAQ from another state).



• Our pet shampoo is malodorous! I've been bathing my dog in it because it's supposed to help with dandruff and dry skin, which he occasionally seems to have a mild case of, but it's really not a pleasant smell. More of a stench. Even though I have taken to putting my own berry-scented conditioner on him afterwards, the smell is penetrating. Any suggestions?
  
  
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  Do you have any suggestions for what I could wash my dry-skinned dog in that doesn't stink?

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• While vacuuming yesterday I found a lollipop under the couch with a wrapper that says "BON BON BUM junior". Which begs the question: is this lollipop intended for people with bums as delicious as bon bons, or for people who have bums whose size is attributed to bon bon consumption? Or both? We may never know, especially because neither one of us is brave enough to actually eat an under-couch lollipop of unknown provenance, even though it's still in the wrapper.



• Wax and I have given up our yearning for the now-discontinued Marimekko pink cheetah wall panel and our new ambition is to adorn the area above our couch with panels of each of these, Marimekko "Karkuteillä" in orange and blue:
  
  

Comments

[guinevere33.livejournal.com]

If it helps at all with the marriage license nonsense, my fiance's family lives in Ames, IA and might be willing to do something local for you.

[cimorene]

Oh wow, that sounds familiar - some of my mom's cousins or second cousins or uncles or whatever must live there too!

At any rate, since the unnecessary extra $28 copy is already on its way to my dad, the most efficient way is to continue as planned; we can't make any copies of these officially-sealed certificates so it's just a question of which one to mail to the Secretary of State, the one I already have or the one he's getting on my behalf (his should save about a buck in postage since it's within the US, but that's it).

[harpers_child]

when our dog had dry skin our vet told us to put olive oil on him. we were also told to put a particular kind of oil over his food. a teaspoon of sunflower oil i think. i am not the dog caregiver at my parent's house.

the olive oil was mostly an after bath thing. the dog in question is a mostly labrador something. i think my dad taped an old tshirt to his butt to keep him from getting oil on everything.

[cimorene]

Interesting... on his butt? How would that work? Not that I think I could tape anything to Perry. I can't see it sticking successfully.

[harpers_child]

dad gives blood on a regular basis. he saves the only sticks to itself tape that the blood center uses to keep gauze on the puncture afterwards. (you can also buy it at drugstores.) since the tape only sticks to itself it doesn't pull the fur off. at the point we did this the dog had managed to chew all the fur off his back end and was a scabby mess. the cone of shame was going to be our next resort.

[cimorene]

Awwwww. :/ My dog used to have that problem from a flea allergy when he lived in Alabama, but Finland is flea-free, thank Gaga. His skin probably isn't dry enough to warrant an olive oil treatment, I suppose, for the mess he'd make. But maybe a more garden-variety moisturizer would be worthwhile.

[waxjism]

"my dad taped an old tshirt to his butt"

My first thought upon reading this was 'whoah, TMI'. Then it was like, 'that is a weird-ass kink.' This is what you get when you spend hours reading a kinkmeme, yo.

[harpers_child]

i could have made it clearer who i was talking about. the shirt was taped to the dog's butt in case you were still wondering.