Queen of Rambles

Another day, another grouch fest. I hate it when I get like this. I think I scared my dad with my vicious yelling. There was certainly no note of friendliness in it today. Even Mike gave me a look that told me I was going too far. That rarely happens.

I went to water aerobics at 1 instead of 7:30 today and that worked out much better for my schedule. Plus, the afternoon teacher is actually a decent teacher who knows how to lead a freakin’ class and motivate people instead of just telling her friends what they should be doing and hoping everyone else could figure it out. The only downside–I found the old people. Not that old people are bad, mind you, but it was kind of cool to do water aerobics with younger people. Notice I didn’t say little old ladies? There were several little old men there as well, which was strange but I suppose good. My aunt was also there, so I got to chit chat with her after I told her who I was. I walked up and said hello and she started with that “hi, how are you doing?” bewildered line that people give when they clearly have no clue who on earth they are talking to. That happened to me last night as well. An old friend of the family coaches swimming so was up there at the end of class. I went to say hello and she couldn’t place me at all. I want to believe it’s because I’m so strikingly beautiful with my plucked eyebrows, but I think it is a combination of three things: I’m old. They expect me to be in Sweden. I have short dark hair. They are used to seeing a teeny-bopper girl with ridiculous long, blonde hair. They aren’t used to Carrie as and adult. I’m not used to Carrie as an adult either and never in a million years would pick my face out of a line-up if you were to show my current face to my 16 year old self.

Then it was off to the DMV to try to get the boy an Oregon ID card or driver’s license. You know how they say the DMV is a hell hole that no human being should be forced to deal with? You know how they say DMV employees are all idiots? I never really believed it. I haven’t been to the DMV much but I’ve never had any problems. Ok, when I went to the OK DMV in college I had problems, but the Oregon one has always been decent.

My opinion changed today.

We dealt with the stupidest woman on the face of the planet. I was ready to climb right over the table and rip her hair out by the roots and then rub it into her eyeballs. I bet that would itch a lot.

We started by asking the lady how long a foreign license is usable in Oregon. She had no clue. She instructed us to contact a law enforcement agency. Then we asked if an Oregon licence was good in other states. Again, she had no clue. Two strikes.

So then we just decided to get Mikey-boy an Oregon ID so he could stop packing his passport around. She got out a paper and started reading it to herself and asking us questions. She needed two pieces of ID from Mike, so went through this whole list and came up with a complete blank. But the thing was, I could read the paper she was reading and he HAD enough stuff. She was just too stupid to understand it. He had his passport. He had his temporary work permit. He had a Swedish driver’s licence. I could see right on her paper that it said foreign documents did not have to be translated into English as long as you could tell the name and date of birth, and you can easily tell that on his Swedish licence. And then she wouldn’t let his temporary work permit count as a document, so he was screwed all the way around. When you enter the country on a “green card” the immigration officials take all your paperwork and put a stamp in your passport that acts as your temporary green card. They then mail you your regular green card over a year later. Stupid? Yes. Fact of life? Unfortunately. Since the temporary green card was stamped into his passport she refused to accept it as two separate documents. I can sort of see the point of that, but then again it is just stupid since that’s the way they do things! Strike three.

When we got back home we had some wonderful news from Grandma. Her muffler was broke so she took it to Midas. They called and her front axle is broken as well. Guess who broke them? Me! Yup. I run around crushing mufflers and axles in my spare time. And I also broke her washing machine. It’s amazing the damage I managed to wreak on her home the four days we were staying there. She didn’t say as much to me and Mike but that’s what she told my dad. Her car is 17 years old. It’s going to have problems. I’m pretty sure me driving her car on three occasions is not quite enough to destroy a muffler or front axle. She always has to have some excuse though. Nothing that goes wrong can ever be her fault, especially since she believes her car is in mint condition. Admittedly, it is in pretty good shape for being 17 years old, but it does have problems and I don’t think I have anything at all to do with those problems. Is it really my fault that the first day we were here the door handle fell off in my hand? No! It’s not! I don’t care what you say, you can’t make me believe it was anything more than sheer dumb luck.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2004 at 7:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.