Parking Wars

Dear DC,

I can't say that this city has been kind to us in terms of bringing our car. It's like our car is a foreign body in the city's immune system and it is trying to reject our car...there have been many obstacles. The least of our problems has not been parking the dang thing.

Let's clear this up right up front....I have the utmost respect for parking authority officers. They have a crappy job that make them the most hated people in the city (well in DC that would be the politicians, so...2nd most hated). I sure would respect them a whole lot more if they LEFT ME THE HELL ALONE! Ok, I've recomposed myself and can now continue.

First, all of the parking here is parallel parking. Seeing as I don't drive the car when I'm in it anyways (everyone who knows me knows that I HATE driving and make Kyle do it all the time, but that's another story) this shouldn't bother me that much. It doesn't bother me until I start looking around at everyone else's dings and scrapes on their nice cars and realize that we aren't the only ones who totally suck at parking parallel. That's probably the scariest part...worrying about everyone else trying to fit in that too small spot right in front of our car.

So when we came home last Sunday and found an open parking spot on our street with plenty of room on both sides we snatched it right away.

We had parked unbeknown to us in a handicapped parking spot. Yes, even with parallel parking there are still handicapped "stalls". This one happened to be randomly placed right in the middle of the street and it also happened to cost us $250. Extortion is my cry!

Of course the very next day we also got a $30 parking ticket for parking longer than 2 hours without a permit because we couldn't find big enough scissors to cut through the enormous amount of red tape it takes to get anything done in this inefficient ineffective government that is DC to actually register our car in a timely manner. Figures.

So far our $250 ticket hasn't shown up in the payment system because it was a handwritten ticket. I am just crossing my fingers that it never shows up! It is doesn't, then thank you inefficient ineffective government that is DC! God bless.

With love,

Julia