Getting legal to drive in Texas.
1. Have cars inspected. Make sure stickers block driver’s side of windshield.
2. Get rx for handicap hangtag. If your doctor won’t because she thinks you don’t need it (wanna see the 5 scars, 6 removed screws and orders for motion safety for a total hip?), go to doc-in-the box and have a PA write a script-nicest medical guy I’ve met.
3. Have all cars get license plates. Dump personalized plates you have had for 20 years b/c they are $100/year extra. Each car. You can keep your old plates. Maybe a criminal can use them.
4. Get DL. You have to have license plates first. Be sure to sign up as an organ donor! No test if you have an active license. Just the eye test. Pretty funky if your LASIK is monovision. Make sure your picture looks like you were just released from the penitentiary. Ask for a copy of rules of the road and watch the look of amazement!
5. Go back to license plate office to get hangtag because they need your new DL # on the form.
6. Screw in plates in the hot sun until t-shirt drips. The new version of TX plates are very pretty, but do not have a horse on them.
7.Worry about how you are going to license the horse trailer, which is in Arizona, later. It has to be in Texas to be inspected. Hard to haul horses in Arizona when their ride is in Texas. Glad to have an RV pad in my yard for parking it, though.
8. Hit the road. Tip: Do not go to DPS (DMV everywhere else) the day after a holiday on the first day of the month.
9. Tell everyone you are a new Texan, y’all.
10. WARNING: Don’t even try to speak West Texas. After forty years in Colorado, I never got rid of my Chicago accent, which is one of the most unpleasant in the nation. You have to ask these kind folks to please repeat what they say, as it is unintelligible to the untrained ear. Understanding will come eventually.
11. Reward yourself with chocolate.
ps: Remembering my mom on what would have been her 88th birthday. ILYVM, CLE.
Texas is a whole other country. Witness the driver license scenario. Add to that the hoops I had to jump through to get a vet license here, and the test turned out to be 100 T/F questions that were the level of a freshman vet student. Now, I’m applying for the Intent to Practice Law in Texas and bingo-same hoops as vet license only they can’t transfer between departments. I also have to get fingerprinted for the millionth time (they have to use some stuff that makes the ridges stand out,) and I had to pull up every application I made to law schools. Why? They want to see if you wrote the same thing. The numbing thing was getting handicap hang tag. My doctor wouldn’t do it, so I went to a doc in the box and the PA not only didn’t look at my records but also didn’t charge me mumbling that the regs were ridiculous.