Oy

As frustrated as I am at this point I cannot help but laugh. Maybe only slightly maniacally.

Let me preface this by saying I love my husband very much and I miss him more than anything.

But man he is lucky he is not in arms reach of me right now! Because I would not hesitate to smack him upside the head. Not hard. Just a tap. But it would happen.

Let me explain.

Geico sent our new insurance cards today so after I got home from work I went to put them in the truck and the car. I put the one in the truck and as I sit in the car to put it in the glove compartment I glance at our registration.

WHICH EXPIRED IN AUGUST.


Since Ryan is obviously military the cars were always just his jurisdiction. He wanted to have them both with his home of record in South Carolina. When we were first married and living in the DC area this saved us a LOT of money in insurance and other fees... but when we moved to North Carolina my husband never changed our address with the proper channels in South Carolina. We realized this recently when the truck registration was due and we had to reorder it because it never arrived. But my husband only paid for duplicate registration, which meant no stickers. Which means until one of us goes to the DMV in South Carolina our lisence plate is wrong but at least our registration is right. Well Ryan told me he went online and changed our address so we should be good. We weren't good. Obviously.

I have been very, very lucky not to get pulled over driving without a registration for two months.

Back to today.

UGH.

So after realizing the registration was expired as of AUGUST I go on the SC DMV website and get directed to the treasurer/auditor for my husband's home county's website. I call a few numbers and a very nice guy in the Auditor's office helped me out. Basically if it was just paying the taxes we would have been fine and could have paid it online and gotten it done. But South Carolina has a new tag fee this year which now also has a late fee... that cannot be paid online.

The final solution we agreed to is he will mail the tax form my mother in law, his home of record, she will go in to the treasurer to pay it, take the receipt and go to the DMV and pay that fee and the late fee and then mail me the registration and the sticker. I will then mail her a check for whatever the final total is. In the mean time I will have to drive the truck, broken window and all, to and from work every day. Yes, the gas is going to suck as is trying to have a cigarette in traffic when I can't roll down my window (but my husband will fix it when he comes home, or so he says), but at least the truck has a valid registration. The tags are not valid but if I am pulled over I can pretend I didn't realize it and promise to order the sticker as soon as possible. My next week day off (which is NEXT Thursday) I am driving to North Myrtle Beach, which is the closest DMV, with my Power of Attorney to take care of the damn sticker situation with the truck. None of the six DMVs in the state of South Carolina that have Saturday hours are within five hours from here so that is my only option.

The reason all this happened? According the auditor guy our Virginia address was in their system so in July/August they sent the tax forms there, they were returned with a forwarding address but you cannot legally forward tax forms. So we just never received our bill. He has removed that address from the system completely so at least at this point only the SC address is on there. I guess when my husband changed our information with the DMV the tax office didn't get it.

I am beyond frustrated at this moment. I am very thankful my mother in law is willing to help us out and run around and pay up front for a lot of this until I can send her a check. I am also glad I haven't been pulled over because it is a $250 ticket for driving an unregistered vehicle. Yes I looked it up.

I just hope this is resolved fast. I hope the mail is fast and I just want to fast forward already. I've said that a lot lately. I am SO ready for this deployment to be OVER.