A New Beginning

I wanted to make this part of Monday's entry public because the DMV Saga was such a saga.

I fell asleep around 1 am, the night before, so that part was modestly successful.

I woke at 4 am, congested and coughing. I took some Sudafed right away because it was in reach. The coughing persisted, so at 4:30 I got up to take some generic NyQuil.  I fell back asleep around 5, and woke again at 6:58. "1 more hour," I told myself, and dozed until 7:30. At that point, I gave up on sleep. Instead, I lay there feeling awful for several minutes until I could convince my body to get out of bed.

I checked on Mom; Dad was with her,  staring at the bottle of nystatin powder. "There she is," Mom said. "I need my eye drops. Those are not eye drops."

"No, they are not." I fumbled at her night stand. 

"It says ophthalmic on the label," Dad said. 

I found the eye drops box. "These are eye drops." I gave them to Mom. I peered at the nystatin label, which says “not for ophthalmic use.”

After she used the drops, I reminded her about my 9AM DMV appointment. "So if you need anything else, I have to do it now." We took care of the things she needed. I blearily left the room to fix breakfast and went upstairs to eat around 8AM. I checked the drive to the DMV: 12 minutes per DuckDuckGo. 

At 8:28AM, I went downstairs to get dressed and get ready to go. Once in the car, I put on a podcast and set the Google Maps app for the DMV. Drive time now: 14 minutes. Well, it was 8:40AM now, so still fine on time.

Traffic continued to get worse during the drive. It was a few minutes after 9 when I finally reached the DMV. I immediately realized I’d made the appointment at the wrong DMV. I’d intended to go to the same one where my parents got their licenses. But this was the “closer but a little worse” DMV that my brother M had not recommended. My entry when I got the appointment specified that I’d picked the “nice DMV”, so apparently I misclicked or grabbed the wrong address from my brother’s email on the topic. Too late to do anything about it now. I prowled through their parking lot for a place to park.

There were none.

I pulled out of the lot, slightly panicky. It was 9:05 now and I only had until 9:15 to check in. I drove down the road, looking for a legal place to park, then gave up and made a U-turn. I’d thought to park at the tire place across the street, but three cars were already parked on the grass along a “do not enter” drive. All right, I’ll just park illegally here with all the other illegally parked people. I got out of the car, grabbed my mask and my bag with the documents, and headed for the DMV building.

A long queue of people filled the walkway up to the DMV. There was a side staircase that went to the entrance that wasn’t jammed with people; I took that and walked inside. I walked past the people waiting in the first lobby and entered the second lobby, looking for a place to check-in for my appointment. Based on my experience with my parents, I understood people with appointments waited inside and had some kind of separate check-in process.

There were no employees to greet newcomers, and no signage for “check in here if you have an appointment,” or anything else. 

A woman who looked like an employee brushed past me, and I turned to her in desperation. “Excuse me, do you work here? I have an appointment and I just want to check in.”

She opened her mouth to answer, and then her eyes lit at the word ‘appointment’. “Oh, you have an appointment? Here.” She led me to the unoccupied reception desk and pointed to where I should stand. I gave her my name and she crossed it off on a printout of appointments. “I need your old driver’s license or passport, birth certificate, and proof of insurance.” 

I got out my driver’s license and documents folder. “...oh no, I left my phone in the car, it has my proof of insurance. I’ll be right back.”

Her face fell. “We can’t take digital documents.” 

...

Well, that had been on the list of ‘things that could go wrong’ for a reason. It would have been nice if the website had said all documents needed to be physical, though.

She continued, “The only thing I can do is give you a fax number. If you can fax it to us...?” She handed me a slip of paper.

It’s the year 2025 and I don’t know why fax machines are still a thing, but there was presumably still a service that did something like email-to-fax. I could not give up this easily. “All right. I’ll look for an app. I’ll be right back!”

“Take your documents, please.”

I gathered them up and rushed back to my illegally-parked car, retrieved my phone, and searched for a send-pdf-as-fax app. The first one in the store was listed as free. I downloaded and installed it, and opened it as I re-entered the building. 

The employee manning the reception desk had vanished again, leaving it empty. I stood before it as I selected the insurance pdf for the fax app and entered the number.

“Subscribe now for unlimited faxes from your phone!” the app offered. The cheapest plan was $15 per week.

I backed out to see if there was a cheaper option for Just One Fax. 

There was not.

...

I suspected there was a cheaper way to do this via some other app or website, but I made the executive decision that Getting This Done Right Now was worth $15 and paid it. 

App: “We’re sending your fax now. It may take a few minutes to transmit.”

I sat in one of the few empty chairs in the waiting area, near the empty reception desk.

After a few minutes, the app announced “fax complete!”

The employee still had not returned.

I waited anxiously. They knew I’d arrived during the appointment window. She’d crossed my name off the list. So I wouldn’t lose my appointment slot? Hopefully?

Every employee present projected auras of Extremely Busy With Specific Patron and/or Not A Patron-Facing Position. I turned to the person waiting nearest to me. “Is there some other way for me to finish checking in, do you happen to know?”

The other woman considered this. “She’ll be back.”

“Okay, thank you.”

They called off a number: D-401. I did not have a number, because I hadn’t finished checking in. There wasn’t a “take a number” machine or anything. You had to get the number from a person.

I waited anxiously, wondering if the fax app had actually worked. I couldn’t see where the fax machine was.

My phone rang: it was Brittany, the occupational therapist. I answered, thinking she was running late and I’d need to give her Mom’s number.

No, my mother was having medical issues and Brittany wanted to know if they should call EMS. I told them to do so as long as my mother didn’t object. Mom has not been consenting to medical treatment lately. 

Brittany disconnected. I stared at my phone. It didn’t make sense for me to give up on my errand today; I needed a driver’s license and my current one would expire in September. It takes 90 days minimum to get a DMV appointment. I would be considerably less useful as a caregiver if I couldn’t drive Dad to appointments.

I continued to wait anxiously.

The receptionist returned, leading another patron. I hopped up from my seat. “Excuse me, sorry, I faxed the insurance, would you be able to see if it arrived?”

“Oh! Sure. One moment, sir,” she added to the other patron,  and disappeared behind a cubicle divider. A minute later, she reemerged, carrying a piece of paper. Success! It was my proof-of-insurance! 

She took all my other documents, paper-clipped them together, and returned them to me. “Check your phone. You’ll get a text with your number.”

I checked. “...it hasn’t showed up yet.”

“It hasn’t? I’ll write it down.” She handed me a slip with A-128 written on it.

I had a number!

I returned to my seat. The DMV announcer called “A-130.” I looked at the numbers displayed on the “next in line” monitor. D-304, B-152, B-201, A-125.

“Their numbering system is byzantine,” I said to the woman I’d spoken with earlier. “A-125 is fourth on the board so maybe I’ll come after that.”

“It’s so confusing. I got in line to get in here at 5AM.”

I winced. At least she’d made it to the last stage.

A little time passed. I called Brittany back. She was still with Mom. Mom had refused EMS. I asked Brittany to give Kim my number, since I hadn’t yet, so that Kim could call me if the situation worsened.

The receptionist showed four people into the waiting area. They waited behind ropes until she had time to process them. I heard snippets of an exchange between her and one of them: something like “you’ll get a text in 3-4 hours.”

“Okay, and I come back then?”

“Right.”

A little after that, a man and a woman entered the waiting room. The receptionist told them, “I’m sorry, we have no more slots for walk-ins today.”

The man gave her an incredulous look. “We’ve been to the webpage. There are no appointments. Anywhere in the state.”

“You have to go after midnight. Like between midnight and 12:30. That’s when the next appointments open in 90 days,” I said.

“This is crazy,” the woman with him said.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes it is.”

A-125 had moved down to the 5th position on the monitor. I remained mystified by their numbering system. 

“A-128 to station 4,” the DMV announcer called. None of the numbers on the monitor had changed.

I leaped to my feet and hurried to station 4. The man took my papers, reviewed them, and had no issues with any. Whew. He had me remove my mask and glasses to take the photo for the license next, which got my hopes up that I didn’t need to do anything else. Nope: vision test was next.

“...I foolishly put on my reading glasses to come inside,” I said, which is true in the sense that ‘I have glasses that are technically better for a distance but the difference is so slight that I seldom bother to use anything but the ones that are best for my computer monitors.’ “My distance ones are in the car. Can I get them if I have trouble?”

He gave me a look. “This is a distance test. Reading glasses are not gonna cut it.”

“My prescription is really similar for both,” I explained. He had me do the test, and I had no issues with reading the text .

Identifying signs by shape alone was another story. “Stop sign,” I said, because that one was easy. “...why do I recognize nothing else by shape?”

He gave me hints: “If there was an X on the next one?”

“Okay, railroad crossing.”

“Children?”

“Oh, school crossing.”

“Gets no respect in your old state?”

I stared at the sideways elongated triangle, mystified. “...can you give me a hint?”

“I just did.”

“...”

“It’s a no-passing zone.”

“I’m not used to recognizing them just by shape.”

“That’s fine,” he said, then added in mock-stern tones, “No license for you,”

Despite the obviously unserious tone, I narrowly avoided panicking as he went through the remaining steps. The rest of it was just me signing documents and registering to vote, and him scanning my documents to their system. No written test, no driving test. Thank goodness. 

The irony of needing to send my pdf to their fax machine so that they could scan the paper back to a pdf was not lost on me. It’s 2025 and we have better technology solutions than this, but there’s no political will to fix the broken parts of government bureaucracy. 

And “you need to fax your pdf” was frankly the least broken part of their DMV system, which is obviously understaffed and probably doesn’t even have enough physical buildings for the level of work they need to process.

At last, he gave me a temporary paper license and told me the permanent one would arrive within two weeks. I thanked him and left, clutching my paper license. 

I did it! I got my license renewed!

I still need to get the registration changed to the new state, but that could be a battle for another day. It didn’t look like this office did registrations, and I was pretty sure I’d need an inspection and probably some other paperwork that I didn’t have on me. (I later learned I was correct in presuming the DMV doesn’t do registrations in this state.) 

In the DMV parking lot, I saw a car with no license plate lifted by a tow truck. My view of the lane where I’d left my car was partially blocked, but I couldn’t see any cars still along it. Oh no, maybe it was towed, I thought. And then, Eh, it was worth it to get the driver’s license over with. I can pay the towing fee and take a Lyft to pick it up.

But when I rounded the slope on the lane, I saw my car. It was still there! God had mercy upon me!

As I reached it, I realized that the lane was empty because the parking lot was also now half-empty. Since the DMV had run out of walk-in slots, all the walk-in people had left. The entire ordeal had taken about an hour, though it had been so nerve-wracking that it felt like much longer.