Tickets

I am the ticket queen. Wherever I go, I seem to get a ticket. Albeit, I tend to eschew any type of parking guideline and park my car wherever I want; I seem to always walk up to the vehicle, I can barely afford, to find a ticket.

Yesterday, I got what seemed like my millionth ticket. This ticket of all tickets had me perplexed, because I have parked in the same loading zone for the past 2 months scot free and yesterday was the day the buck stopped. I walk out into the dark, frigid night to see a dangling flap of white “ticket paper” and my heart sank, for this is a ticket in a long line of tickets. All year I was relatively relaxed about the whole thing, confident when registration time was upon me that I would be “all good”; but, it is almost time for me to register my humble little jalopy and as I tally the total, my heart begins to beat quite a bit faster.

There is the $150 fine and the four $50 fines looming; I take full responsibility for the $150, as no, able bodies person, should park in a handicap stall, but the $50 fines, I take very little responsibility for. Allow me to explain, I went to a school (NAIT) with almost 2000 students and there are almost, but not even, 500 parking spots; leaving the other nearly 1500 poor saps, to fend for themselves in street parking and daring mall parking…and the mall is NOT kidding around, they will tow you and not even blink an eye. I will admit that some of those tickets are due to my negligence and my inability to play by the rules but some are straight up the schools fault.

Seeing as I am still broke, I haven’t the faintest idea how I am to afford to register my little machine. I am again thinking, which I am beginning to think is a part of the problem…thinking. What if I hadn’t quit that nursing home cooking job, which paid me a generous $15/hr? Would I be in a constant financial bind? Thinking about that job sends cringes down my spine, being there, trapped in a kitchen for 8 hours, and I would even leave an hour early every day, for my sanity. Had I stayed at that job I would most certainly be very close to debt free and I would not be living at home with my (wonderful) mother.

The decisions of 2009 are still coming back to bite me in the ass. It is only the beginning of 2010, but 2009 is still haunting me with its poor decision making and stacks of bill and parking tickets. It’s funny because 2008 was plagued with speeding ticket and as 2009 was dawning, I vowed that my speeding ticket days were gone; I should have been more specific. I am not really a praying woman, but churches are beginning to look a whole lot better as I think I might need a miracle any day now.

I have a lot of clothes kicking around, maybe I should sell those or maybe I should sell something else (wink). I am obviously just kidding, but I definitely see how people get to that train of thought.

I’m just saying.

update: tickets officially total $450.oo...ouch