Es lo que hay

After Ivan's head cold flared up again Monday, he opted to put off his plans to work on the roof, and instead we decided on a nice "sedate" trip into Cordoba on Tuesday. We needed to drop off our floor plans for what will hopefully be the final corrections (but at least the municipality approved these plans, pending corrections, on our third submission) and Ivan wanted to check up on our DNIs (national IDs). We'd both applied for new ones since my old one expired while we were on furlough, and Ivan's suffered a trip through the washing machine that had left him looking a little peaked (as in, his photo completely disappeared). 

Long story as short as I can make it (we all know my problems with brevity):
Registro Civil, where Ivan applied for a new DNI back in February, lost his paperwork.
Migraciones, where I applied for mine in January, had it ready -- only it turned out they'd used the wrong last name AND a different number. For anyone who knows Argentina, numbers are sacrosanct, and must NEVER, EVER change. As far as the issue with the name goes, here I officially have to use my maiden name and they'd put my married name on the new DNI.

That's the bad news.

The good news is we were both allowed to re-apply yesterday. It took a good portion of our day, but at least it's done.

And we go back to waiting.

Now you may be wondering about the title of this post. Simple really. I've decided to start using this title whenever something like this happens. "Es lo que hay" has become my mantra since moving here. Roughly translated it means "It is what it is" and the reason it has become my default is because so often STUFF HAPPENS and there's nothing I can do about it except accept that "es lo que hay".

While sitting in Migraciones and waiting to hear how to proceed, I told Ivan that he can have "es lo que hay" inscribed on my tombstone. He smiled and quipped, "Yes, but WHICH NAME should I put on it?" I'm sure everyone else in the waiting room wondered about the gringa loca who started hooting for no apparent reason. After all, there's not usually much to hoot about in that place.

In other good news: we knocked out some serious shopping while in the city, stocking up on cleaning and paper products that should last us through the winter, as well as grocery staples such as flour, sugar and tortilla chips.

Which I now have to put away this morning, since I was way too tired last night to do more than take care of refridgerated items.

It was 37 degrees when I woke up and I plan to spend the day indoors, drinking lots of liquids and staying close to the tissue box. Looks like Ivan shared his cold with me.

Es lo que hay.