Friday Fiasco

March 24, 2008

I took Friday off with hopes to get a ton of stuff done – and well, I did get some things done. But we got stuck in an F-5 fiasco that wouldn't go away! (For you non-Okies, the "F" scale is how we categorize tornadoes. An F-5 is the most violent.)

Joe was off for Good Friday, so we had lunch together at Café Do Brasil in Midtown at 11th & Walker. It's one of the (many) northside restaurants that I've been wanting to introduce Joe to. I had a broccoli-cheese quiche with spinach-strawberry salad, and he had a spicy tuna-patty sandwich. Good food, good service, good atmosphere. Good start to our afternoon together.

We strolled down to Kaiser’s for dessert – Kaiser’s, on 11th Street, is an old ice cream parlour from 1918. It is so quaint: black & white tiled floors, a 50s-style Coca-Cola dispenser, a pianist, and the high, sculptured ceiling so typical of turn-of-the-century buildings. I had a chocolate-mint milkshake that filled 3 glasses full. There’s my calorie intake for the next week and a half!

Afterwards it was off to Suited for Success off Meridian, to donate clothes which have been hanging in my closet for a year or more. According to their website, "Suited For Success provides professional clothing and career development services to low-income women who have completed a job training or job readiness program and are actively seeking employment." The charity provides a necessary service to women in need, and I've been contributing to them for a number of years. It's a charity I believe in.

The afternoon was proving to be not just fun but productive too.

Then, it was off to Factory Direct Furniture & Bed to look for a mattress. That's when the fun began! I was in the market for a queen-size…and boy, did it turn out to be a fiasco! I had no problem picking out a mattress that I liked. I had planned to pay for the purchase with my credit card then pay off the card as soon as my tax refund came in. Well, of course I had to show my identification. That's when the clerk pointed out that my driver's license was EXPIRED. Therefore they couldn't use it for identification.

I thought I'd write a check for the down payment then finance the balance. That didn't help -- my ID had to be current in order to write a check and sign a promissory note, too.

I was running out of options. My bank had a branch just down the block and across the street from the furniture store. The ATM will only allow $200 to be withdrawn in a day and I needed to withdraw $400. So I'd have to go inside, where surely the teller would ask for my ID. She did, but either didn't notice or didn't mind that my driver's license was past the expiration date. Whew! I had my down payment.

We raced back to Factory Direct to give them the cash, but I still had to update my license in order to sign the promissory note. The clerk was nice enough to complete the paperwork to the point where all I would have to do is show my ID and sign the papers when I came back.

Factory Direct closed at 6:00. It was after 4:00 already. There's a new law in Oklahoma that says if your driver's license has expired, you have to present your ORIGINAL birth certificate in order to renew it. I was born 5 states away! My mom probably has my birth certificate tucked away in her files somewhere!

Oh, no she doesn't. She gave it to me for my own keeping, many years ago. Thankfully this was one less thing to worry with.

In Oklahoma we can get our driver's license at any Tag Agency. But, with the new "original birth certificate law," I had to visit an agency who has in their employ a person certified to authenticate the birth certificate. Yukon has two.

And they both close at 5:00. After leaving the furniture store we raced back home in Yukon to retrieve my birth certificate. Then we pulled into one of the two eligible tag agencies, only to discover that the "certified authenticator" was gone for the day.

We drove down the road and around the corner to the other agency. It was past 4:30 and I was praying that their "authenticator" had not left yet. She hadn't. Thank goodness! I paid the fee, had my picture taken, took my new license and off we raced BACK to the furniture store to sign the promissory note.

Finally we could breathe a sigh of relief! The mattress was scheduled to be delivered within 24 hours. But that wasn't the end of our story.