I went to Wedowee this morning to get my license plate yearly sticker and decided to buy an Alabama Audubon bird tag. It’s so pretty. Has a hawk on one side and says Save Our Birds across the bottom. My sister-in-law Debbie was tagging along. When she got here she said she’d drive so I hopped in.

When we drove up to the courthouse and parked, I realized my insurance card was in my car back in Roanoke. Stew has no car key so he had to rummage through my messy desk and find an Alfa bill to get the information I needed, take a photo of the new card, which doesn’t kick in till November, and text the photo, so I could access the mobile app for proof of insurance. Then trying to get the Alfa mobile app required passwords I could not remember! I was exhausted by the time I got it all together. Then entering the courthouse I set off the alarm with my silver bracelet, twice.

I was afraid my phone screen would change and I wouldn’t be able to access the car insurance information again so I just put the phone on the counter. The clerk never asked for proof of insurance and I was too traumatized to offer it.

I turn around to walk out the courthouse and trigger the alarm, again. “It’s just your bracelet,” he says for the third time. Like I didn’t hear him the first two times.

I take Debbie out for lunch at a little sandwich shop there and Stew texts me and says a chunk of sheetrock had fallen from the ceiling my bedroom. The upstairs bathroom is over the door entering my bedroom so I heart attacked all the way home. That’s another tale for another day.

This trip to Wedowee made me remember the three previous trips to the courthouse it took to register my car in Randolph County. The car title, which I never could find after Chief died, was in his name so I went prepared with his paperwork — birth certificate, marriage certificate, death certificate —to get a new title in my name before I could get a new tag. If you are a new widow you learn fast to keep those documents close!

On the third trip I feel fully prepared for the tag. Clutching the temporary title I enter the courthouse door and an elderly man in overalls is having a fit about his pocket knife. “Why can’t you just hold it here till I finish my business,” he says. “ Didn’t you read the sign?,” they say, “No, knives.”

After a few minutes of this, I say,”Excuse me, Sir, but just open the door and throw the pocket knife in the bushes outside and pick it up when you leave.” The security men look at me like I’m crazy and the elderly man just grins.

I put my purse in the security bucket and walk through the metal detector and set off the alarm.