Apparently I’ve been a criminal for the last 9 months. Who knew?
When I moved to start my new job here in central Connecticut, my license expired five months before I could move into my apartment. So I had a new license made with the new address, but attached the old mailing address until I got settled.
Then my change of address forms went awry. Or I never filled them out. Or I submitted them with change of voter registration but…. it hardly matters. DMV didn’t find me for more than a year. And my plates and emissions confirmation for my car both expired.
Over months, Ganesh glared at me more and more from the dashboard. There’s a little figure of the Hindu God opening the ways for me. He’s very helpful. I knew something was wrong.
Finally I realized the emissions was expired and so was the registration. Got the windshield (broken) fixed. Got the emissions system tested (failed). Got it fixed. Got retested. Success. Made a sigil to “successful at government offices” and another “rarely waits in line”.
Today I arrived at the DMV 2 minutes before closing (on a Friday!) The tiny office was still open. There was one person ahead of me in line. The DMV clerks couldn’t help him (satellite office, not main branch), so he left the counter 7 seconds after he got there.
30 seconds later, I had my new registration and confirmation that both license and registration addresses were correct.
The clerks closed up shop right behind me, with two people standing in the hall outside, holding up paperwork and looking sad-angry.
Frater RO says that working the “favor of kings” magic makes you the ruler of your personal kingdom. In 10 months I wasn’t pulled over for any moving violation or driving an unregistered vehicle or anything. There were fines, to be sure, and back payments owed on the reregistration, but the “favor of kings” doesn’t mean a free ride.
It does mean getting things done and achieving goals even when the universe should be dumping on you hardcore. Which means saying thank you for the grace given. And it means accepting grace when it’s bestowed, and passing that grace on.
But it also means that your car gets to be street-legal 30 seconds before DMV closing on a Friday.
[…] And so it proved. Getting the caked-on duct tape glue off the car was more challenging, and less successful. As you can see from the last photo, the cleanser I chose (based on the recommendation from someone at Home Depot, alas), is that it removed the duct tape adhesive, but also the paint. (I’m thinking I should design a cutout of Celtic designs to go around the damaged area, and pay to have it printed on the right material). However, it proved to be the case that the repair of the back gate was indeed something I could handle on my own, and that I could in fact repair this thing which had been causing me hours of misery and frantic upset while on the highway. […]
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