I’ve been to hell, I spell it,
I spell it DMV.
Anyone who’s been there
Knows exactly what I mean.

     – DMV / Primus

All my sins shall be forgiven. All my transgressions absolved. My karmic burden has been lightened, my repentance complete. Today I have suffered for the sins I have committed and for those I am yet to know. Today I have known the pain, I have endured the misery, and I have emerged triumphant.

Today I spent 4 hours at the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, משרד הרישוי for those not in the know. After coming back from Atlantic City last night, we returned to our lovely Jeep Cherokee, left a deposit and drove off to the DMV to get it registered under my name. There the madness began. It turns out I do have the proper identification for it, but the insurance company’s letter did not contain all the required bits of information. So for over three hours I was on the phone, alternately, with Joanne, Helena, Nelly, Vanessa and Ryan from the insurance company trying to get them to fax over something that the DMV could acknowledge. It turns out none of the form letters the insurance company had fit the bill. Even after we made sure it had all the information – down to the personal signature of Ryan, who had nothing whatsoever to do with us anyway – they rejected it because, get this, it wasn’t formatted as a LETTER, but as a FORM.

Add to that the fact that Ryan seemed unable to write down the correct start and expiration dates of the policy and you get half a day of faxing and refaxing between the incompetent insurance salesmen and the stoicly apathetic DMV employees who refused to actually tell us what it is they wanted. This we did with decreasing cheer while accompanied by Pat, the tattooed, womanizng, Irish charity case that Jack had doing odd jobs for him – and by “accompanying” I mean going out for a smoke every 4 minutes or whenever he saw something blonde to latch on to.

But we won. We went through the entire insurance company, but we won. We moved up to the supervisor at the DMV, but we won. We spent our days and lost our will to live, but we won. We got the registration approved. We bought the car, and are now the proud owners of Amanda, our ’98 Jeep Cherokee. It is a  red jeep, and we want it painted black.

(Pictures will come when my internet connection allows them)