Everything Happens At Once- A Tale of Expiration

It's a lovely time of year. Winter is coming to an end, and there are exciting holidays like Valentine's Day, Half-Price Chocolate Day, and St. Patrick's Day. It's a time of change, a time of new life. Robins perch in the trees, ants tromp through the house... Wait, what. Hand me that can of Raid, would you?

Anyway, it's a time of many things. So much can happen. Including the possibility of... every blasted thing happening at once. At least, it was this year. Grab some popcorn to eat, or some rotten fruit to throw, because it's a wild ride.

It's the Neverending Story...

So, tax season is upon us. We went to H&R Block to get our taxes done. Since the tax year's income had been a jumble of "Well, I worked a bit here. And I tried to do some house-cleaning. And also I got income from this, and..." I was worried it might be somewhat complicated. Around the same time, I also realized my ID was about to expire, so I would need to get that renewed soon. Ugh...

Our appointment was early in the morning, and Mom and I are not morning people, so we moaned and groaned our way there. After parking in the frigid tundra, we walked over, then realized the place wasn't open yet. Neither of us wanting to stand outside waiting, we went back to the car until they opened.

The taxes wound up being simpler than I thought they would be, and after we got everything done, we went to a restaurant for breakfast, then headed home. Home, where things stink. Literally.

"Maybe we should take out the kitchen trash." I commented at one point, as I had been smelling bad things off and on for hours.

 

As it turned out, the horrible smell was emanating from one of the bathrooms. Not a place you want to have a mystery stench. Was it a plumbing issue? It smelled more like rotting things than sewer stuff, though. We had a plumber come by, and he inspected the bathroom and looked under the house. He couldn't find anything wrong with the plumbing, but he said there were rodent droppings in the crawl space. Worried there was a dead mouse or rat somewhere, we called some pest control places. More people crept and crawled and slithered around under the house, but no one could find the stupid dead thing.

Meanwhile, the house continued to reek. My brother brought home a can of air freshener, and we sprayed that thing on a regular basis, trying to find some relief for our poor noses. We were told that the dead thing was likely in the vapor barrier, where it couldn't easily be reached. They also said the insulation under the house looked damaged, and should probably be repaired. And various people kept traipsing in and out, and quoting increasingly high estimates, and saying they couldn't find the dead rat, and demanding arms and legs and firstborn children and unicorns and snipes, and...

 

Finally, my uncle and second cousin came over to take a look at things. They crawled around under the house, and finally found something. A horrible, smelly, disgusting... bird. A dead bird??? What was a bird doing under the house in the first place?

My uncle also came by a time or two more to do a bit of patch work on the insulation under the house. And that was that. No gigantic bills, no long and involved renovation, and no more horrid stench of death. So that was a weight finally lifted from our minds. And our noses.

Of course, then there were the stupid cards. We were thinking of taking a short vacation, going out of town for a couple of days. I was going to pay for the hotel rooms... and my debit card wouldn't work. Turns out it had just expired, so I had to use my credit card instead. Which, as it turns out, was going to expire next month. Even more baffling, I had just received a new credit card in the mail, but didn't recall getting a new debit card. 

As I pondered this, I began to have a thought. Some time back, I had received a piece of mail that looked like an ad. Just a piece of paper talking about some random service the bank provided, with a card attached to it. Was that supposed to be my debit card?

As it turns out, it was. I had tossed it with the bills and receipts and other things to be shredded, because I thought it was a random card offer. So now I felt dumb for not realizing they sent me a new card, and for dumping in the shred bin. Admittedly, though, it said nowhere in that piece of mail that I needed a new debit card, or that this was it. Well, at least it hadn't been shredded yet.

Apparently I'm stupid for not magically knowing things that nobody told me.

Finally got my new cards activated, so that was done. Then I got something in the mail, about how the direct deposit for my tax return didn't go through. But I had requested to just get a check. Do they not do checks any more?

The paper said to do it online, which was annoying. It seemed like the website asked a billion questions. Then they wanted me to take a photo of my ID and upload it to the site. Since mine had just expired, and I hadn't got it renewed yet, I wasn't able to complete the stupid thing for getting my tax return.

On to the renewal. I wanted to get things done quickly, especially since we were about to go out of town. I got up early (Did I mention that I don't do mornings?), got ready to go, and dragged myself to the DMV. It wasn't open yet, and unfortunately, I didn't have the luxury of waiting in the car, because there was already a line outside. Since the weather had been a bit warmer lately, I foolishly thought I only need a light jacket. Forget that the weather might get colder again. Forget that it's generally colder in the early morning hours.

So there I stood, on what seemed to be the dwarf planet Pluto, freezing my butt off. I wished I had brought my heaviest coat. And a hat. And a scarf. And gloves. And a ski mask, and winter pants, and mukluks, and an anorak. The DMV finally opened, and we were able to take refuge inside. I took a number and sat down to wait. The stupid screen mocked me at first, and didn't even show my number. After a while, it finally appeared on the list, and I waited as my estimated wait time got smaller and smaller.

Finally, it was down to one minute. Any moment now, I would be called, and I could get everything done. Any moment, any second now...

Five or ten minutes later, I was still waiting. Apparently DMV minutes are not the same as regular minutes. Then, at long last, they called my name, and I was able to get that renewed. I have a super-exciting piece of paper now, until my official ID comes in the mail.

 

So that's how the last few weeks have been. My ID expired, my debit card expired, my credit card was about to expire, a random bird expired, and a chunk of my sanity may have expired as well.

But things can only get better from here, right? The chaos should be over now, right?

...Right?