How many hoops...

...must one jump through in order to simply renew their registration at the RMV? I don't know. Perhaps we can all count together at the end of this post.

My registration expired on Halloween. My bank account on that date had a negative balance, so there was no hope of paying for the new registration on time, compounded by the fact that before I could even consider paying the renewal fee, I had to pay parking tickets owed to the city I work in, and a speeding ticket in the amount of $300.00. Ouch. For the record I would like to just say that I am not a chronic speeder. I'm really not. My sister would tell you that I'm the safest driver she knows, and that it's almost annoying sometimes because I don't drive with the typical recklessness most American's (and Bostonians) take for granted. That said, I was speeding the night I got the ticket. I was going 85 on the highway, in the middle of the night, driving home from the casino, and there were no other cars around me for reference, and I just didn't really notice that I was "speeding." Most of you are probably laughing because, let's face it--'most nobody considers 85 on the highway to be speeding. Except the bored Statey who pulled me over.

$300 in my world might as well be a million dollars. And I cried a lot over this ticket, because I cry at the drop of a hat these days because life has been heavy and I'm kind of tired of it. I digress.

It was 8 days from Halloween before I got paid again, at which point I paid the stupid parking tickets, and I paid the stupid speeding ticket. When I paid the speeding ticket I was informed that there was now a $70.00 fee attached which also had to be paid before my registration could be renewed. Are you freakin' kidding me? Do you see how the universe insists on fucking with me at every turn? And we've barely started.

Okay, so I pay the fee, but that isn't going to leave me with the actual registration fee anymore. So I wait. Two weeks later I get another paycheck. At this point I discover that the payment on the parking tickets has bounced, incurring a $25.00 fee, which gets sucked out of my paycheck as soon as I deposit it, and I go online and pay the parking tickets AGAIN.

I go to the registry, which logistically in and of itself is pretty much a nightmare. This particular branch of the RMV shares it's 25-car parking lot with a pizza/ice cream joint, so good luck getting a spot in the lot. Or on the street, which only has parking on one side in small stretches. There are no nearby side streets because it's a large sort of industrial stretch of road. I park across the street in the lot for a contracting company, feeling kind of sketchy about it, but taking note of the fact that nowhere do they have signs indicating you can't park there, or that they'll tow you or anything like that. I run across the street into the RMV and am met with sign upon sign stating, "If you are parked in the lot across the street, please move your car immediately or it will be towed!" Seriously? Why don't they have a big ol' sign that says this? I'm torn. It's about ten-of-five and there's no chance I'll find another space before they close. Can I see my car out the window? Not really... I decide to risk it. I go up to the triage desk and ask about what I need to renew my registration. I say it's late and ask if there's a fee, which the woman behind the counter doesn't seem to really know. "Well, if there are tickets..."

"I paid them last night," I say.

"They might not be in the system yet... Let me look. What's your plate number?"

I give it to her. She looks something up on the computer and then turns back to me. "Yeah, they're still showing as unpaid."

WHAT?! "So what do I do?" I ask, trying not to let my frustration explode onto this innocent woman.

"Do you have the receipts?" she wants to know.

"Yeah, at home. On my computer."

"Well, you need to come back with those so we can clear the tickets and then we can help you."

So at this point I'm stressed about driving around with an expired registration and getting pulled over and having God-knows-what kind of outcome. She gives me the form to fill out and tells me to show it to the cops if I get pulled over, because at least it verifies that I've been to the RMV and that I'm trying to renew my registration. It doesn't seem like nearly enough to me, but I thank her and head out, expecting my car to have been towed just because.

It wasn't, thankfully, and I went home. It's a few days before my schedule allows me to head back to the RMV for Round 2. In that span of time the parking tickets bounce again (and I hate that I live so close to the edge that that can happen without me realizing it's going to happen), and I stress. I figure I'll bring the receipts and pretend I don't know they've bounced. Maybe the receipts will be enough to get the renewal, and I can deal with repaying the parking tickets after the fact.

I go back to the RMV with my e-mails all printed out, verifying that I made online payments, and I luck out with a bit of street parking, and am feeling pretty good about getting renewed finally.

I wait in line and finally get called. I explain what I'm there for, hand the woman at the desk my form and my e-mails and she looks at me and says, "This isn't valid proof of payment."

"What do you mean?"

"These aren't valid proof of payment" she says, as if pluralizing it will suddenly make it clearer.

"They told me last time I was here that if I brought in the e-mails--"

"You need a certified receipt from each of the towns the tickets are in--they look like this." She waves a couple fancy pieces of paper in the air and my blood boils.

"They TOLD me--"

"They were wrong."

So there's nothing she can do for me. My e-mail printouts are useless. And it turns out I have another parking ticket from my hometown, that I didn't even know about, that needs to be paid as well. She prints out this information for me, so I can share it with the appropriate city collectors.

I leave the RMV for the second time, completely aggravated yet again. It's almost 5:00. Too late to get to either of the towns I need to get receipts from and back before they close.

Fast-forward to Friday, when I finally have the time and money to pay for the hometown ticket, and repay the bounced work-town tickets, and get all the right receipts and finally get everything squared away. Or so I think.

I have quite a day planned, what with a show to run that night, and planning to pick up a friend in Wellesley... I have to be kind of everywhere and I'm trying not to have to back-track too much and waste time or gas. I start at home. It's about 1:30, and I have to be in Wellesley at 2:00-ish, so I'm already aggravated to be running late. I get to City Hall and discover that they close at 12:30 on Fridays. In my mind I am standing outside the locked door of City Hall and screaming "Serenity now!!!!!!" a la Frank Costanza, at the top of my lungs. In reality I am hissing, "Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?????" as I pull on the locked door uselessly.

I get back in the car. So now this is a bust yet again. Without these tickets cleared, a trip to the RMV is useless. But I decide I will deal with the work-town tickets while I am there (because that's where I was going to be ending up after the Wellesley pick-up anyway), and then on Monday I can get the rest of it done.

I do what I have to do over the weekend, stressing (as usual) about being pulled over and having my car taken away on the spot. This has happened to my brother. The cop wouldn't even give him a ride home. I, of course, don't have a cell phone right now to call someone for a ride in that situation, so I would be extra screwed. So I really don't want that to happen.

That brings us to today. I head to my hometown City Hall to pay the ticket... where I am told that because it's an old ticket or something, they can't accept the payment there. I have to call some other place and mail it, or if I want to do it immediately (and it will clear in the system within 15 minutes) I can do it online at some website they give me. I'm racing the clock as usual, needing to get to work by 3:00 to make an important phone call, and don't really have the time to go back home (or anywhere else) to get access to a computer and make the payment before heading to the RMV. I ask if I can use one of their computers to jump online and make the payment. They say no. You're real human beings... I spit telepathically.

I leave. I go to work to deal with the phone call situation, and make the stupid online payment. At this point it's really too late to head back out to the nearest registry, because in traffic I'd probably not make it, and I really needed to just work anyway. That was a wise decision on my part because as I later discovered, most of the RMV branches had been shut down that day due to a fire at a branch in Boston. After all of this, had I arrived at the RMV to find it CLOSED... you'd be reading about ME in the papers tomorrow.

So this is where I am at. Desperately trying to renew my registration so I can be all legal again, and being met with a ridiculous obstacle at every turn.

Now seriously--try to convince me the universe isn't just fucking with me because it can.