I Can Legally Drive Again

Or: How I Stressed Myself Out for No Reason for 3 Days

Sunday night/extremely early Monday morning, Ace and I went to Wal-Mart to do our shopping. When we checked out, I suddenly realized that our licenses expire at the end of Monday and we needed to go get that taken care of.

Monday, we go to a local tag agency (because that's where you go to renew your license in OK). There is a fairly long line, but it ends up moving decently fast. The last three people in front of me (who actually got to get their licenses in process) are waiting for the licenses to print out. I go through everything and move to a bench to join those who are waiting. Ace, who was right behind me, also gets through with everything.

Then they spent at least the next 30 minutes trying to get the printer to work and print off the 5 licenses that are in queue. And they work on it. And they work on it. And then they call whoever fixes the machines when they are down and see if they can fix it that way (no, they can't). They end up sending everyone home who was still in line and giving the three of us who were still there waiting our old licenses and our money/checks back (actually, I don't know how it turned out with the other guy there, we left after we got our checks back). Ace decides that we aren't going to go wait in line at another tag agency, we'll just come back to this one tomorrow.

Tuesday, Ace calls the tag agency to find out if the printer is fixed. We're told not yet. We, unfortunately for us, have someone coming to try to fix our problems with our printer/external hard drive (and no, I won't post about that later, because I'd like to just forget all about it). When he leaves, after we eat, we go back to the tag agency to try to renew our licenses. We're told we have to have our certified birth certificates to do so (they couldn't have mentioned this Monday?). I have to get mine out of our safety deposit box at the bank (I grabbed a certified copy of the marriage license too, just in case). Ace has to find out if his parents have a certified copy, because the copy they gave us isn't certified (they didn't, and then we went shopping at Sam's, which is totally unrelated). I post about what I will write about soon.

Wednesday, Ace calls to find out what he needs to get a certified copy of his birth certificate (his license, and some knowledge about some of the facts on the birth certificate, including how to spell his parents full birth names). We go by and pick up 2 copies (somewhat long line, but he filled out the form while we were waiting). I had to remind him to get his old license before we left. Then we went back to the tag agency (we've been there 3 days now, in their 4 day work week). There is no line, just someone standing in a bad spot. We get our licenses quickly, as we now have all the right data to prove we are US citizens (born, although we've both lived in the US all of our lives, the state of Oklahoma doesn't care). Ace comments that my picture looks just like the one on my old license (except I'm not wearing my glasses), and I wonder if this all would have happened if I'd just worn a red shirt on Monday.

So, I can legally drive and am not having problems sleeping through the night anymore (except when we forget to close the office door and the phone rings).

And believe me, I'm hoping in 4 years, we'll remember to renew our licenses in February when we have to get the new tag for Serenity, because, as we so helpfully learned, you can renew your license up to 6 months early (Ace just wants to know why they don't send our reminders for licenses like they do for car tags. I do too.).

Have you recently stressed yourself out for no reason? If so, why?