The light is at the end of the tunnel for the whole car issue, which should make me a much more interesting blogger. I'm not going to write about it for fear of somehow jinxing the whole acceptable solution, but I promise to give a brief, interesting synopsis once things have arranged themselves.
We spent yesterday evening searching frantically for the titles to our cars, a real romp through the many boxes o'crap that collect when you have a pathological fear of filing. As of last night, I have handed the filing and record-keeping duties over to Chip, who should have had them all along. Before we got married, he had an immaculate and detailed system that included saving telephone bills from companies in other states from nine years before, and--as could be expected--I gave him some gentle ribbing for that. He would say I mocked him, but I don't think it was ever as harsh as that. In any case, I think I broke his organizational spirit, and so he left it to me. Big Mistake. Huge. While I am organized enough to make sure that bills get paid on time, doctor's appointments get made and kept, the cat stays current in shots, and other life management activities, I have never been any good at keeping papers sorted and easily accessible.
Hence the missing car titles. I'm assuming that most normal humans have a safe place where they keep such things, all the better to grab them quickly during an emergency. Not me. I'm tricky that way. If someone wants to come into my house and steal my identity (or my car title or my escrow papers or my birth certificate), they're going to have to work at it. I'm not going to make it easy for them by labeling some file with "important documents". That's just asking for trouble.
The only problem with my security system is that it is so secure that I can't even find the things I need. That can create issues. Last night was the perfect example. Instead of spending a relaxing evening watching television or even finishing laundry, we were instead roaming the house looking for boxes that might--maybe--contain an envelope with car titles inside and locking the cat in the closet by accident. As is the usual case in such frantic searches, we found the titles in the last box we checked. That's pretty much always the way it goes. If I could just look at a pile of boxes, declare one the last that I would check and then check that one first, maybe I could make it work for me.
But it's probably just easier to let Chip figure out an actual system.