We have renewed the plates on the car and truck for 2 years and longer than that for the trailer…so the only reason I can see going back to the DMV in Cass County will be if we buy a new vehicle.  You can renew on line or in the mail…but 1) I forgot and 2) you have to have the 2 past year personal tax statement from the “collector”, along with your auto insurance card and the little card they send you in the mail.  If you don’t live in Missouri, the MV licensing process is much more difficult and chaotic than it is in Iowa.  But, you pay a very minimal amount for your license tags but at the end of the year, they send you a personal tax invoice to pay for all of it. The $$ is probably the same in the end but just seems to be a ridiculous process…Don’t quote me but I think the amount of personal tax on each vehicle is like 9% or 13% of the blue book value.

Caution:  not politically correct

So today at the DMV…the line was out the door…that is frustrating.  There are several and I mean probably 10 chairs set up in an L shape around the walls to take the weight off while you wait your turn.  Each time I have been in there, people are sitting on the chairs and when it is your turn at the window, everyone gets up and moves down a chair.  That way it is easy to keep track of who is next.  But not today.  The old lady (probably my age) with white hair up in a pony tail, a cane, wearing too short of shorts didn’t understand the drill.  The guy in the brown t shirt wanted to know why no one was sitting in the chairs ahead of her…she gave that toothless laugh and said well they must think I will bite.  Finally someone moved out of line and took a chair with nearly every person ahead of us reminding her not to forget who she was behind in line.  So white pony tail lady gets it figured out, I think, and gets up and moves one chair over. leaving 5 chairs ahead of her.  I was frustrated.  Finally I thought screw this idiot process so he and I walked over and sat down ahead of her…reminded by the chorus to remember who we were behind.  Through all this cacophony, a couple of big red neck type “fellas” were talking loud about working on engines.  So loud that I was having a hard time hearing what I was thinking.  THEN…they start heckling some guy at the counter (who appeared to be clean and had a job) because he had several vehicles to title and things were moving at less than snail pace.  These two morons just kept at it – everyone was talking amongst themselves which culminates in that constant low hum and rumble and then you had jack ass and jack off talking at the top of their voices…mama obviously didn’t teach them inside voices.

After expletives to him passed my lips a couple of times, I finally hunkered down..stuck my fingers in my ears as far as they would go, closed my eyes and tried to deep breathe.  I felt at any moment that my high anxiety level was going to kick into rage level…I remember one other time this happened to me at the bottle redemption center – some town clown kept talking to me and I asked him to please shut up and this offended him….HE was standing behind me and decided to let me go off on him because he knew he could take him.  I tried to remain calm today because I knew he could take one of them but who knows when you are dealing with idiots who might carry a gun!

I feel better.

Until next time….