DMV

Ahh Mondays, you gotta love 'em. Today I woke up eager to begin blogging. Apparently fate decided I needed plenty to write about. I have a new voice recognition program. My plan was to walk on the treadmill and dictate my blog. Except the dictation program that worked perfectly on Sunday, decided not to work on Monday. I ended up with an exercise in futility, dictating nothing and doing only doing 15 minutes on the treadmill. So I started today with two choices. I could be proud of myself for doing 15 minutes of walking and give myself an E for effort or be upset that I didn't have time for thirty.

The highlight of the day was dealing with the DMV. Unbeknownst to me, my saga started in 2006. On another freezing cold day, in February of 2006, our old Windstar die a slow and painful death after years of faithful service. My car taxes were due in July of 2006. At that point, I informed the DMV I no longer owned the Windstar. In theory, I pay taxes and fees on the Concorde I did own. I put the sticker on my license plate like a good little tax-paying citizen. I drove blissfully along for another year and again renewed my tags. In 2008, I was pulled over by an officer stating he had run my plates and it appeared I had stolen my tags. I had to take a half day off work and prove I'd paid for the tags on the Concorde. At that time, I was assured there was a glitch in the computer and everything had been fixed.

Fast forward to December 2008, My son, Will, got stopped twice right before Christmas for not having current tags. Last week I called state and spent about 30 minutes having them research my problem. The clerk told me, she could see I had paid the taxes for the Concorde, but the county had issued the tags since 2006 on the old license for the Windstar. I asked if she could just mail me the corrected registration and tags. She informed me they had to be picked up in person at the DMV. I gave Will a notarized letter stating he could act as my power of attorney at the DMV. And thank goodness I did. Because then he got to spend three hours in the DMV and I only had to spend an hour on the phone. Let's face it, kid time is more expendable than adult time.

The long and short of it is Will had to give the DMV almost $300 and after more time on the phone I will get a refund for all but about $75. I think most of us can relate to bureaucratic frustrations. But this is where choice comes in. In the great scheme of things, a few hours spent dealing with the DMV isn't a big deal. And that's what I choose to focus on. When I got off the phone, I just wanted to cry. $75 is still $75 when money is tight. I spent about 10 minutes calming myself down and remembering to put the $75 in perspective. I reminded myself to be thankful that at least the gentleman at the DMV didn't charge me a penalty for my late "taxes" and was willing to issue the partial refund. I believe those are the keys to put things in perspective; focus on what went right and remember the long term. Minor frustrations only ruin my whole day if I let them.

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