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Moving On

There have been a lot of changes for us since we moved to Michigan.  Chief for me has been losing my army of health care professions which I have slowly and reluctantly needed to replace.  An allergist, an ENT, a dentist, an optometrist, and an orthopedic surgeon.  I've also needed to find a new cleaning lady (the allergies don't allow me to work around dust or mold)--man, do I ever miss Lorrie who probably knew my house better than I did.  And hair.  Goodness, I'm trying my third salon next week after making the six hour drive to see Jess back in State College last month.  We had definitely put down some roots in State College, and it's taking time to pull those up and establish new ones.

We also had to replace the license plates on six of our cars.  We had been driving around with expired plates for over a year.  Why?  We hadn't sold our home yet, but in order to get new Michigan plates, we needed to prove residency in Michigan.  By so doing, it would inform the insurance company that we were no longer living in PA and our home insurance rates for our PA house would sky rocket.  Considering we are now in credit counseling, paying more for the house that we didn't live in anymore seemed ridiculous.  Now, don't get me started on the fact that we sold the house back in June, and as of October, still hadn't replaced the plates....

So we went to the Secretary of State's office the weekend that Rebecca and Ethan were visiting for Baby's birthday.  We were armed with paperwork...and with John who knows all the ins and outs of registering our many cars...and took a number.  I have to give the SoS's office a shout out--they move through things very quickly.  Probably 20 numbers in 20 minutes.  However, I was waiting for the tomatoes and eggs in the back of the head when registering our cars alone took at least 30 minutes.

Another problem?  Hannah and Glo were driving with expired plates in Utah, Ethan was driving with expired plates in Maryland, and Mark was driving with expired plates in Illinois.  And John has needed to transfer the titles of the cars to the boys (gifting them the cars) which he did with Ethan who promptly had his Michigan driver's license stolen and was unable to license it in Utah.  Thankfully, Rebecca still had her Michigan license.  It's a long story...

So for the last nine years, I've had the same license plate; a throwback to our lives in Germany.  "TSCHUUU". People regularly ask me what it means, thinking that the car is sneezing, but I tell them that it's the wonderfully friendly, sing-songey way people say "see ya later" in Germany.  I really love this license plate, but it was time to replace it.  In fact, John had a terrible time getting it off the car because it was so rusted on.

The replacement?  With it costing $500 annually to register our cars, we weren't about to order a custom plate.  So we left it up to chance and ended up with this:



Or as John and Ethan promptly christened it: Oh My Kennedy, Very 99.

Perfect.

And I added:  99% percentile.  Always room for improvement ;-)

One more thing completed in the transition of life.

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