Can Rosa make it tomorrow?

Written last night:

Lately I’ve been needlessly apprehensive about getting a California auto registration for Rosa and a driver’s license for me. Patrick and Steph have tried to convince me it’s all rather routine, as long as you’ve got the papers and your eyeglasses (for the vision test) and study the online practice tests. But don’t talk sense to me! Since Clark died I’ve been like walking through mud or chocolate pudding. Simple things like this have become hard. I can’t explain it and I can’t talk or think myself out of it. And then there’s my forever fear that things will of course go wrong. Such as: Clark died. But I know Clark wants me to snap out of this right now.  So I’m making a plan to think happy thoughts, not as an antidote to reality, but as reality itself. I know it will take lots of practice. But I’m doing it for you, Clark! and for me. 

I drove to the DMV for practice this morning and it is a circus. You can’t get a parking space; you just drive round and round the lot. Finally you spot someone approaching her car, as if to leave, and you get a little hope. But no, she puts her purse on the hood, leans against the car door and makes a phone call. Then she smokes a cigarette. Then a young woman in short shorts and high heels comes over and sasses her. They were still talking when the car next to them backed out without fanfare and I finally had a place to park. Go early! 

I wanted to see if I need my driver’s license before getting Rosa registered. No, said the lovely woman who operates the desk admitting all of us desperate people for whom a car or an ID card means so much. She was one of those people who make you think you are the only person in the world right now, even with the whole room around us just slightly under the boiling point.  She deserves a raise!

She gave me the forms i need, highlighted where I must sign, and sent me outside to have Rosa inspected. A brisk man with a white jacket and a clipboard (perfect professional combo) recorded the numbers inside Rosa’s hood and front door (driver’s side) and said that she had passed. Step one! I suspected I was more nervous than most, but no — the young man in the car behind me stepped out for a smoke and he was so nervous he was crouching on the ground. “I only want to sell my car!” he said. “Good luck!” I told him as I drove away (cautiously — you don’t want to be in a  a wreck in the DMV lot.) Tomorrow if I’m lucky I’ll get the registration. 

Later I had a massage; I never, ever thought I’d be a regular! I like it. I want to treat myself well, maybe even go overboard. I am squashing the martyr who lives deep inside me. (Do you ever want to do the same?) 

When I got back to the condo parking lot, a large white car was in my space. What do you do when you own one precious space? It’s not really flexible; there’s minimal on-street parking. There are also big parking lots around here, but I’m not sure they’re open to the public. I could eventually find a spot, good for two hours, if I circle the block patiently. I saw a man and asked him what the procedure is; he said it had happened to him, and “I just parked in someone else’s spot, and figured let them deal with it,” he told me… hmmm ….  then a young man came running, apologizing, but not too much. He zipped away in the white car and left me my spot.

This evening Zing and I walked by the K street Arena entrance and saw a TV reporter setting up, probably for a rather generic opening story. I passed one of those men in lavender shirts and asked what they mean. “Security,” he said. “This is our new uniform.” Do the guards like lavender shirts? I asked him. “Some of them don’t,” he said. “But I do.” 

Love, 

k

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