It’s Atlantis time!  It should be gym time, but I unfortunately forgot to pack my shoes before I left the house at an ungodly hour this morning.  Mick is there, and I’m proud of him for it.  While he’s working his tail off, I’m on the couch eating cookies.  I’m not so proud of that.

However, today is a pretty momentous occasion, one worthy of cookies: I just made my final Driver’s Surcharge payment.  Not familiar?  Driver’s Surcharge Fees are reparations that you have to pay when you get, among other things, a DWI.  Generally, if you’re a good kid and blow under a .16, you pay $1000 over the course of a year and then you’re done with it.  I, on the other hand, was not a good kid, blew +.24, and had to pay $1000 a year for 3 years.  $1040, to be exact, for three years.  And today I made my final payment.  So after $3120 in surcharge fees, another small sum in fines and court costs, lawyer fees, 88 hours of community service, one year of probation, $264 in drug tests,  countless hours of AA meetings, $20k and a month of my life for rehab, plus costing me most of my dignity and self-respect, the ordeal is officially, legally, over. 

Part of me is jumping up and down and getting all excited over it.  And I think that’s fair.  There’s a large part of me, though, that doesn’t really feel any better.  Paying a bunch of money to the DPS doesn’t erase the years of bad memories and embarrasing moments and all the things I’m not proud of.  I wish it did.  But I’m trying to be positive.  Yay!  No more payments!  That’s something, I guess. 

I think I’ll celebrate with one more cookie.

Rock over London, rock on Chicago.