It was vaguely reminiscent of our five hour round trip to Antioch two years ago to get him his first Covid shot: it was driver’s license renewal time and there was no point in not doing the Real ID thing–why pay the fees and the DMV time and the bother twice.

We gathered the documents, submitted them online, set the alarm and drove to where and when he could get an appointment–across the Bay a few minutes after that office opened.

Their website didn’t let us schedule both so I came along for the carpool lanes and in hopes they might do mine anyway. They didn’t. I’m next week. But at least at a much closer office.

When we got home It was hard to fathom that we’d done so much in the day and it wasn’t even ten a.m. yet. Wasn’t it lunch time by now?

I waited for people.

I carried the KitchenAid to someone’s car.

I carried my late MIL’s toaster oven to another person’s car.

Not only were she and I moms of the same age, we drove the same car and looked like each other surprisingly much. It was great fun. I noted that there were wooden spoons and a spatula tucked inside her daughter’s new toaster oven because every first apartment needs those.

That delighted her no end.

The contractor having brought up the choice, I did research on fiberglass vs polycarbonate roof panels and brought my results to Richard and let’s get this done.

His reaction was, That’s nice–but what I really really want done is the taxes.

The taxes! That’s what I was going to do today…!

Yeah, when they made some announcement awhile back about declaring California a disaster zone for the floods and said that that meant the tax deadline was helpfully being put off for months for us, my reaction was to groan, Noooo. Don’t tell me that! I don’t need any help procrastinating them, I just don’t! I deliberately did not Google to see if that was a counties-specific or a state thing. Pretty sure it was state, don’t want to know.

And I could tell you all about the fun *that* was this evening, but I’m sure you all did yours and that’s enough of it to have to deal with for the year.

They. Are. Done.

And for the first time ever, the IRS let me file electronically after accepting my name. Maiden one, but that’s huge!

And that’s a whole ‘nother blog post about Bush, the Patriot Act, the Social Security office suddenly seeing half the wives in America now that states making the legal changes were no longer good enough, the IRS never getting the memo and claiming discrepancies and that I was never me–unless my returns came by mail. And then somehow I was. Go figure.

Till today.

Next year maybe they’ll even let me use my actual legal last name!