Right now, this is how I feel about my car…
If you started following my blog back in May, you’re probably aware of my bad luck with cars.
One of the high points of moving back to New York City is that I will no longer need my car. But, putting the Saturn up for sale requires a title.
Which I don’t have. Which I may never have had.
When I found myself in this sorry predicament back in July, I immediately downloaded the DMV form, filled it out, and mailed it to Sacramento along with a check for $33.00.
Three weeks later, the DMV sent the form back to me with a letter attached, asking for another check in the amount of $15.00 for some sort of transfer fee. I complied.
Three weeks after that (on September 4th — the Friday before Labor Day weekend and a bad luck day for anyone transacting business with the State), I received my form back again with still another letter attached.
This time they were asking for a copy of the letter sent to me by GMAC, affirming that my loan had been paid off.
Luckily, I still had it in my files. But because it was the Friday before a holiday weekend, and because the mail hadn’t arrived until 4:00 p.m., I was unable to make a xerox copy of the letter before mailing it out.
Desperate, I sent the original letter to the DMV, and also scribbled a heartfelt note on their letter, complete with the requisite smiley faces, asking if they could pul-lease expedite the processing of it because I was moving out of state.
I knew they’d ignore my plea. They are, after all, the DMV.
But, hoping against hope, and given that their responses to me in the past had arrived in three-week increments, I figured that if they’d set the bar to their habitual “low,” I could expect to receive the title this week.
Sadly, the three week anniversary of my last correspondence with them will fall exactly on September 25 — the very same day I’d instructed the post office, one month ago, to begin forwarding our mail to New York.
Bad karma strikes again.
To make matters even worse, I have a buyer for the car. Normally, this would be a cause for celebration – if I had the title.
I blame him!
There have been so many cuts to the CA budget that the woefully understaffed DMV, which already runs on molasses, seems to have shifted into reverse.
Considering the fate that befell my Subaru right before I moved to CA (as documented this past July in Part 15 of my car saga)…
…this is like “deja vu all over again.”
This morning, an encouraging email from my cousin helped to put me in a more optimistic frame of mind. She believes that the title will arrive just when I need it because, sometimes, life just happens that way.
Keeping that in mind, and in consideration of the potential new owner, I drove to Pep Boys to get the crummy windshield wipers replaced.
The mechanic substituted the pair I’d just bought with the pair already on the car. He also straightened out the bent wiper arm with pliers, as I’d asked him to. In the process of doing that, the wiper arm accidentally slipped from his fingertips and snapped hard against the windshield.
It wasn’t until I was miles away from Pep Boys that I’d discovered the damage to the windshield. It looked as though it’d been hit by a rock.
Remember that old T.V. commercial: Calgon, take me away!!!
That’s what I feel like.
The Ninth House 