Please don't judge me.....

I'm kind of cringing as I write this.  I don't know why I need to confess my sins in this way, but I'm telling you things here that I usually sanitize for other people who I have to see face to face.

You see, the problem is, I'm a slackass.  I usually procrastinate in doing mundane detail type tasks until severe consequences occur.  This is most apparent when it comes to details about my car.

There, I said it, it's about the car.

That's not so bad you say?  Well just give me a minute here.

So I'm driving in Halifax (our closest bigger city for all of you who stumble upon this blog from Australia and New Zealand and Russia.....)  and I'm with one of my best friends, Tabitha.  Now Tab is extremely responsible and not usually a bad influence but something EVIL got into her this day.

We're coming down a road about to turn into a busy, stop and go type road with lots of traffic lights and I arrive at the intersection just as the light is turning yellow.

"Just GO!"  She says, although it was my instinct to stop, not rush into strange intersections in a city I'm visiting.

So I go,  and I see that now directly behind me as the light changes... there is a police car.

Now this would not normally be a problem to most non-slack-assed, law abiding citizens of the world.  But I begin to panic like I've got a trunk full of Mexican cartel members with nether regions stuffed full of nefarious substances.  This is because I have failed to get the licence tags renewed on my car.  It is December and they have been expired since September.   The cop is close behind me so I just know it is going to be apparent that I have failed to do my law abiding duty of renewing my tags REALLY SOON!

"I'm just going to turn off here, my tags are expired, I want that Cop off my ass" I say.  "Oh, don't be silly," says Tab.  That cop is not going to want to get out of a warm car and do all of the paperwork for some stupid expired tags, just keep going.  They're too busy at this time of year for that, and probably lazy on top it all".

So I continue driving, sweating bullets the whole time.  Now you may be thinking that I am overreacting, but here's the thing.  I couldn't bring myself to tell Tab that, um,

Ahem... my licence also expired over a year ago.  So if I get pulled over, I have no licence for the car and no valid driver's licence.  You see my Mexican drug cartel reaction now?

So, of course the inevitable happens, I'm sitting in traffic at a light and "Whooooo, on go the lights and the siren behind me."  We're at a red light and I'm on the inside lane of traffic so I can't go anywhere so I just start yelling, "LIGHTS!  What do I do????  I can't move!"  We have to sit there, waiting for the light change with the cop's lights going behind me. People in other cars are looking at me..."What??  It's not me...can't you see I am clearly a law abiding citizen here....DO I LOOK LIKE A DRUG RUNNER TO YOU?"

So we pull over and the cop comes over.  Female.... just great, harder to manipulate.  She informs me that my licence plate tags are expired and asks to see my license, insurance and registration.

So now I pretend to dig through my purse to look for my license  and the thing is, I know it's not there...I don't carry it with me, cause it's EXPIRED!.. I have this delusion that if I ever get pulled over, I can just say that, "Oops, I don't seem to have my license on me" and they'll say, "Ok, you have 24 hours to bring it to the station, at which point I may feel motivated to get it renewed before I present it to them.  I know, it's a miracle people let me handle sharp objects.....

"I have more bad news, officer" I confess with a cringing look on my face.  I don't seem to have my license on me.."  "Just cuff me now and throw me in jail" I add dramatically, offering up my wrists for her inspection.  She declines politely an asks for some other picture ID to prove that I am indeed the person to whom the car belongs.

Now, here's something else....  the only picture ID I have is my work ID, and the thing is....it's in a different name than the one on my license and insurance.  I have TWO names.  One that is legal that I don't use (my birth name)  and one that I use that is not legal (my step father's name who raised me from a baby).  So some of my ID is in one name (school diplomas, job title) and some is in my legal name on my birth certificate (driver's license, passport).

So I explain to her my two name thing, and she asks if I have any other ID with my legal name on it.  I offer her my credit cards, and then inform her that I realize they of course, could be stolen and prove nothing....  I'm going with as much self deprecation as I can here.... she then asks for my insurance, which I thankfully, do have.  I inform her in a self-rightous way that I would "Never drive with out insurance...."  which I quickly realize has NO CREDIBILITY coming from me.... she takes my stuff back to the car.

Then she comes back to the window and informs me that my license expired in January of 2009..that's almost two years ago, it's worse than I thought.  It's truly a wonder she didn't demand that I get out of the car just so she could smack the back of my head...Instead she informed me that she can't let me drive the car without a valid licence so my friend has to drive it away under her supervision or she has to have it towed.

'Oh, no problem officer" I say, and we give her Tab's license.  As she goes back to her car I realize that my car is a standard and TAB CANNOT DRIVE A STANDARD.  (are you dropping your shaking head into your hands yet??)

So we have to call Tab's husband, Jamie, to come and rescue us.  Tab does not tell him what's going on, only that she'll explain when he gets here.  10 minutes later we see him sitting at the same traffic light (the one that will exist in my nightmares) that we were just at and he looking over at us sitting beside the cop car with the flashing lights, and laughing his ass off! He sends a text. "what did you guys DO?"  I'm so glad it wasn't my husband we had to call, he would not have been laughing so hard via text.

So I finally get the tickets after 20 mins of waiting, and the officer informs me that I can attend court on the date indicated on the ticket and plead not guilty if I so wished.  Seriously, I have no idea how she kept a straight face whilst telling me this....yes, I'll go to court and FIGHT THE MAN..or woman as it were.  Nope, more like sheepishly taking the ticket, and slinking away as quietly as I could, as a passenger in Tab's car cause now I'm not allowed to drive my own...

So I went to the DMV as soon as I could and got my license and plates renewed.  The picture on my driver's license is the worst one I've ever seen of myself, I look like I'm having an anaphalactic reaction to the camera.

To punish myself I vowed to keep it and let is serve as an ugly reminder of the ugly day.