It Was Just One Of Those Days

My alarm clock yesterday morning was a comment from the Boss.

“Hey, are you awake? I’m leaving for work.”

My snooze alarm was a phone call from the Boss.

“Did you know that our license plates are expired?”

Now that woke me up.

Yesterday was one of those days. It was one of those days where a simple one step process was broken down into twenty-three little steps all because of two words that aptly sum up life: Stuff Happens. In this case the “stuff” was the fact that our insurance cards for our vehicles were at home while the paperwork from the state of Kansas for renewing our license plates was on the Boss’ desk on post. The state Treasurer’s office sits halfway between our house and the Boss’ desk, directly across the street from the local juvenile detention facility and about a million squad cars. Isn’t it always the case that the day you are driving on expired tags you see every uniformed officer in a tri-county area on the road with you?

“Our plates expired on the last day of March but I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want you to stress out,” the Boss told me. She knows me well. Ignorantly driving on expired tags for a week was bliss.

So, I left the oldest in charge of his siblings and drove to Fort Leavenworth to get the renewal paperwork from the Boss. That was the paperwork for all three vehicles that I apparently took out of the mail box and threw on the bedroom floor sometime in late February or early March. I say “apparently” because I have no memory of having done so, but the Boss found the paperwork on our bedroom floor while cleaning last weekend and she rarely gets the mail and even more rarely chucks it on the floor.

The lady at the Treasurer’s office was very nice as she renewed the tags on two of our three vehicles. She would not renew the tags on the Boss’ scooter because the Boss had not signed the renewal form and did not think to put my name on the title when she purchased the bike three years ago. The state absolutely refused to allow me to purchase the tags for my spouse. I left the Treasurer’s office, put the new tag on the minivan, drove back to the fort and put the new tag on the car, and handed the scooter paperwork back to the Boss along with the insurance card and told her, “You need to do this one.” She replied, “Okay,” and promptly went out to lunch for Thai food.

Sigh.

I drove home. I fed the kids. I dressed the girl for preschool and the boys for running club. We all drove to the preschool to drop off the girl and drove back to the fort for the running club, meeting up with the Boss at the track in order to give her, her MP3 player. Conducting top secret analysis of combat operations is always more pleasant with tunes.

The scooter still needs new tags.

It was just one of those days.