Adventures at the DMV

So, I have a confession to make.

This is a good one...

Ready

I have been living in Oregon for almost two years without an Oregon drivers license.

I'm pretty sure this is illegal on a variety of levels

... but it gets better...

I recently discovered that my Utah license has been expired for 6 months!

That's right...

6 MONTHS!

OOPS!!

I know, extremely illegal!

But to my defense, I really think that someone should send you a letter or email to prevent this from happening. Oh well.

This leads me to my wonderful adventure at the DMV. This has got to be one of the worst places to be in the world next to the dentists office. I was really dreading it, but luckily my wonderful husband agreed to keep me company for the whole day. Sucka! Anyway, I made sure that I prepared myself. I went to the website and made a list of all of the documents that I needed to bring. Old drivers license, SSN Card, utility bill... pretty standard, I thought. But just in case, because I certainly did not want this to be an all day affair, I packed my passport, birth certificate from Canada, birth certificate from US, marriage licenses... You name it, I brought it. Or so I thought.

I was feeling pretty good when we got into the car to go to the DMV. I felt prepared. We plugged the address to the DMV into out GPS and were on our way. We ended up driving to a residential area. Clearly, not the DMV. So we tried calling the office to get directions. The lady that answered the phone informed us that the GPS does not work for this particular location and that we had to follow instructions online. Oh my, this will be fun. The directions were extremely hard to follow. Here is an example:

'Just past OR-217 before the railroad tracks, turn RIGHT (North) on the connector road.'

No clue what a connector road is. Needless to say, we got very lost.

We finally made it to our destination after a half hour of driving, and I was already irritated. Luckily, we had brought every document that we owned under the sun, so we would be ok. Wrong. First, my drivers license was expired, so we had to revert back to my passport (I was really glad I brought that. Genius, Anna!) However, my passport was in my maiden name. They told us that they needed something else to make the connection that the two names were in fact the same person. Remembered the marriage license. Yes! I knew I brought that for a reason!! However, the gentleman told us that the marriage license was not an official license. I couldn't believe it! Mike and I tried to explain to him that this was the only license that we had and that we had ever received. The gentleman didn't seem very sympathetic and repeated that he needed a marriage license issued by the state. He went as far as to say that it looked like the most fake marriage license that he had ever seen. Maybe the whole "For Time and Eternity" thing through him off. Anyway, I was livid! Luckily, another lady that overheard our conversation informed the man that the drivers license can be expired for a year and they will still consider it valid for identification purposes. Crisis averted!! However, I think I should check into getting a state issued marriage license. I guess I just assumed that if it was accepted in Utah, it was accepted everywhere. My bad!

Wait, the story gets better. On to the proof of residency. Now, I'll admit that I didn't really check the utility bill that I had grabbed for a date. I just grabbed the first bill that I saw and left the house. However, the bill that I provided the employee was 3 months old. The employee reminded me that the bill must be no more than 2 months old, and that I needed to go back home and get a newer bill. I couldn't believe it! The last thing I wanted to do was to drive back home, come back, and wait in line for another eternity. But you gotta do what you gotta do. So, we went back home, came back, and went through the whole deal again.

On the bright side, I am no longer breaking the law, and my driver's license picture didn't turn out half bad :)