The words in my brain are bouncing off the walls. It's been a week of constant word tweaking and form filling and question answering and more word tweaking and editing and contemplating to the point of brain frazzled exhaustion. The first stage of grant writing is complete; now it's time to gather the final documents, which might be impossible.
One of the things one has to do for a grant application to be considered is to prove citizenship in the city of Houston. They ask for 24 consecutive months worth of utility bills, or something to prove that one has lived within the city limits for at least two years. The first problem is that I am not that organized to have ready access to such records. I throw things away constantly, and only keep one month's worth of records before I destroy/shred everything. So I called the city of Houston, to see if they would provide me with documents from the past 24 months saying that I have lived at this current address. VERY graciously, a city employee gathered one year's worth past water bills, and a letter certifying that we began water service at this address in 1993, but the utility bills are in Reese's name. All the bills are in Reese's name.
So it's very likely that my grant application might be thrown out on a technicality. I am a citizen of the city of Houston, but can't prove it.
4 comments:
i believe you are a citizen. just give them a tour of the town and they will understand.
xoxo
Aw, Mary. What a sweet thing to say. Thank you.
What a let down to all your hard work!!! This may be a stupid question but, if you have a driver's liscence older than 2 years, could that somehow be used??? Would they accept any letters addressed to you that are older than 2 years??? I hope this will easily rectify itself!!!
Hrmm . . . Once upon a time I was involved in writing proposals for grants, and while they were sticky, they were never THAT sticky. I mean, it's very common to have things listed under the name of a spouse. If they *are* sticky (I suppose you'll call Monday?), perhaps you have a marriage license that would indicate you've been living here and not Prague or Paraguay or Pennsylvania? Sorry it's complicated, yikes.
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