Peace and Quiet

Today is the day Gramma leaves. She leaves this evening. We are enjoying a quiet day at home. The Boy and the Girl are hollering about the dominoes, the little boy is running around with a flag singing hoop-dee-doo (a Wiggles Song). At various points throughout the day, every child has screamed loudly about something, often for extended periods of time.

Gramma has played babysitter a lot this week. She says she enjoys getting the chance to do it, and I'm thankful for the chance to let her.

Today I had to go downtown to take care of traffic tickets. I got one for a broken tail light which wasn't broken. I think it was a scheme by the police officer to give a reason to cite me for the other reason he pulled me over - my registration had expired. He was behind me on a red light that we got stuck sitting through twice due to stupid drivers, and I think, given it was the last day of the month and quotas are due, he decided to run my license to see if there was anything he might be able to snag me on. Yup. (registration stickers go on the front of the car here, so you can't tell by looking at the license plate alone that it's expired.)

Anyway, he gave me a couple tickets, one for the light and one for the registration. I was really overdue on the registration, so I'm not really complaining about getting the ticket, but I'm not sure when I'd have been able to take care of it, since I worked during the normal business hours of the annex, hence couldn't go in and take care of it unless I didn't mind not getting paid, and I was already losing money working as it was (paycheck didn't cover daycare. So glad I'm in law school). But I digress. My registration was expired and I got cited for it.

The city gives you plenty of options for taking care of the ticket. Plead guilty, pay in full before your court date, or, in the case of registration, license, proof of insurance, etc., get it fixed within 10 days and mail in proof with a 10 dollar administrative fee and they will dismiss, except for registration, which they MAY dismiss. So I opted for that option, and went in on the next available business day to get my registration taken care of and buy a new light bulb for my tail light, which I ended up not needing. As I was getting everything ready to mail in, the proof of registration, etc., I realized that I couldn't figure out how to mark that I was sending in proof of compliance for one item and not for another... I got sufficiently frustrated to the point that I decided to go take care of it in person so I could talk to a real person.

So I get to the courthouse, eventually found a meter, paid for an hour and ten minutes, went in and got in line. Long story short, after waiting for a couple hours, they dismissed my tickets.

It was not fun, and I don't care to do it again for myself anytime soon, but at least I saved $220. Sometimes easier isn't better.