The Pink Shoe Diaries

Some people like to live their life according to certain rules. You know "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" or "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" and so on. I also like to live my life according to a rule. Specifically a Catherine Aird quote:

"If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning.”

Amen.

With that, I present to you the Saga of Registering My Car: 2006.

Now, I think you are aware by now that I am a lazy person. I don't like to go out of my way to do things usually and that extends to things like doing housework and paying bills. (Adam is a lucky guy, oui?). Anyway I got a nice little love note from the RMV a few months back reminding me not only that my registration was soon to expire but that I had a few unpaid parking tickets, and had not yet paid my excise tax from last year they were going to go ahead and NOT renew me until such a time as I took care of these outstanding items.

So of course I quickly sent off a check for my late excise tax, then folded up that letter and put it in the "Important Bills" bin thus assuring I would never look at it again.

Flash forward to yesterday. I am cruising down the street when I see the dreaded blue and white twinkling lights in my rear view mirror. I pulled over and a young police officer came up to me and informed me that my registration was expired. Wasn't that so nice of him to take note of while he was behind me in the Dunkin Donuts drive thru? I certainly thought so. He (thankfully!) did not give me a ticket but he did inform me that he 1) knew where i lived and 2) would be checking that night on my car and if it was not registered he would give me a $100 ticket and would continue to do so until I registered that shizz.

I was all " FINE, I GET IT!"

Now, paying off overdue parking tickets is not a simple matter of just calling up and giving someone at city hall your credit card number. Especially when you have outstanding tickets in more than one town. Especially when there are 7 tickets total. So I had to leave work at 2:30PM and do the following

1) Go to Newton Town hall and pay my first ticket where I learned that:
The town hall looks like a frigging museum
and
When you let a $15 parking ticket linger for so long, it becomes a $50
parking ticket. Swell.

2) Go to Boston City Hall to pay my next 6 tickets where I had to wait in three different lines , including one to pass through a metal detector. And there I learned that paying 6 parking tickets two years late means paying $351. Charming.

3) Go to my insurance company and pick up something called an RMV-3 form which essentially tells the RMV "Hey, I may be a deadbeat but I still manage to have and pay for car insurance"

4) Go to my apartment and desperately search for the reciept from paying my late excise tax (which btw was another $320).

5) Then, and only then, could I make my way to the RMV where I (finally) registered my car in less than 3 minutes.

6) Then of course I drank heavily while admiring my shiny new "08" sticker.

So there you have it. What could have been paying $15 here and there after Boston excursions, and paying a $140 excise tax bill when it came in became about $800 worth of headaches, driving around like a madperson, and feeling generally like an asshole.

So pay your GD parking tickets. Don't be like me.

Don't you be like me.