Triangle of Doom

This week I embark on a journey from which I may not return. I am off to the CAF, La Caisse nationale des Allocations familiales, to obtain our Quotient Familial, QF. I am off to the place where souls are lost and people have gone missing in the vastness of paperwork. Lost, never to be seen again!

Why do it then? Well, Elise has to eat! At school that is. And the CAF is one of my stops on the triangle of doom that has consumed my world for the past 10 days and will continue to until I can successfully tear it down with a (1) avis d'impots, (2) quotient familial, and (3) l'inscription au restaurant scolaire. The trifecta of doom and my life this moment!

Thus, this week it's the CAF, followed by the Maire next week to figure out la tarification et la facturation au restuaurant scolaire. This after a fabulous trip to the centre d'impots last week for l'avis d'impots, Ad'I!

Oh, the avis d'impots? It's like your key to life here in France. From what I'm slowly, painfully, learning is that when a frenchman receives his/her avis d'impots in July, (basically it's your tax statement saying what you owe or are receiving from the French government for last year's taxes), you scan it into your computer, make 835 copies for all the government officials that will need to see it, laminate it in plastic, downsize a copy to fit in your wallet so you can show it off like a picture of a loved one, and then laminate it in gold and lock it in a safety deposit box where it will be stored for the rest of your life because you may need to show it at any moment. Key to life, no exaggeration. And until I started the registration process for Elise's canteen, in which I needed the QF but couldn't get that until I went to CAF with my Ad'I, I had never heard of the avis d'impots because we had not received ours yet! Thus, the first stop in my triangle of doom, the centre d'impots!

Here we go....Thursday I am armed with every document of my and my family's existence. Birth certificates (in English and French), salary stubs, marriage license, tax forms, passports, visas,...Everything! I'm ready for a battle with the tax man. Ninety minutes later I'm speaking with a tax woman about the missing foreign bank account information that has halted the delivery of our avis d'impots. They can't process our taxes until we give them our American bank information. Ah, but lady, flip over the last page of our paperwork. Yeah, that's right, it's all there. You received it in May. You just needed to flip over the page of our renseignements! Aaugh!!!!

Seriously? Yes, seriously! Here we are, the earthly conscience americans trying to save some paper by printing all our information double sided! I'm done trying to save mother earth while living in Paris!

Alright, so super frustrating but one point down, two to go of the trifecta of doom!

Which takes us to this week...

And although I used this weekend to relax and mentally prepare for the disappointment and dispair I will inevitably feel when dealing with the CAF people and they refuse my request for a QF because we have yet to receive our new visas, which expired in August and we started the paperwork for renewals in June but since no one works most of July and August we have yet to hear about new visas, (breathe), I am hoping for the best! :)

So, wish me luck! Let's hope for minimal paper-cuts and blood loss as I take on l'homme. I have taken down one angle of the triangle of doom and I am not scared. I will succeed! And being the math geek that I am, I wish I could come up with some clever way to defeat a triangle of doom. I can't just square it, hee hee, or cube root it, but I will destroy it! How to do that mathematically will be something I will ponder as I sit in the waiting room of the CAF. So stayed tuned because I am certain to come up with something mathematically witty as I wait!