Ricky Ticky Recon

I promised an explanation, so here it is (and in case you forgot what photo I'm talking about, or else you came in late, here it is):

I blogged about our roommate back in February. Well, he moved out (or more or less my husband and I kicked him out because it was right before the deployment and was causing unnecessary stress). Well, the entire month he lived with us he never paid any rent. Not a damn cent. I partially blame myself for that because I never really "enforced" it with him. I left that up to DH, and although I love him to death, he's not the greatest person to leave in charge of conflict resolution (not that I'm any better...as you will soon learn).

So, after bumming a room off of us for a month, and joining us for family meals that I cooked, and tagging along to all of our weekend fun, drinking our booze, and requiring transportation everywhere, we finally got him out. He found a studio out in O-side. The only problem was...the car. He needed a car to get around, and we happened to be selling one.

Now, I would have happily signed my title over right then and there, except for 1 little fact: his driver's license was suspended. As a car seller, I want to protect myself from liability and I cannot sell a car to someone who doesn't have a valid driver's license. Why? Because in order to release myself from liability on the car, I need to transfer the title and that requires them to appear in person at the DMV with a valid license. So I declined to sell the car. He asked if he could borrow it until he got his license. Pssssh...that's even more of a bad idea. I certainly don't want to be responsible for car accidents or moving violations done in a car I own by a guy without a license. And I'm not saying he would have done anything, I'm just saying it's not responsible.

He allegedly called the Oregon DMV and got his license issue fixed, and so we were just waiting for it to come in the mail. A few weeks later I went and got my car smog checked as per California regulations. It failed. Miserably. Well there goes the grandiose plan of selling it. In order for the new owner to register the car, they would need to pass smog. So I decided not to sell. And I have no idea how that kid got to and from work everyday, but that's really not my concern.

The week after DH left, I got a call. It was our ex-roomie was asking me if I was still interested in selling my car because he got his license, and he was going to just fix the smog issues himself. We agreed to meet up and he would give me a ride back home. I transferred the title over to him, he gave me $2,000. Now what happened was, I forgot to take the plates off the car, so he drove off in my (now his) little Taurus with plates registered to me. I let it go for a few days because I expected him to go to the DMV and get a temporary registration until he could fix the smog issue. He decided a weekend trip down to San Diego to get his d*ck sucked was a more responsible idea (*sigh* Marines).

About a week later I still hadn't heard anything about my plates. I kept telling him, and expected him, to go and get a temporary registration. It's really not that complicated. For some reason he kept trying to hold the car repairs over my head as an "excuse" and I bought into it for a while until a friend of mine reminded me that I really didn't owe him anything. I let him live with us for free, eat our food, DH gave him rides to and from work (EVEN during his week off, which really just threw me over the edge), and I gave him a pretty good deal on my car. There's no reason why I should "owe" him the use of my license plates. What if he was in an accident or got a parking ticket? That's going to come right back to me.

So after a few days of pestering and getting no response I finally asked him again on facebook. His response? "Don't exploit my personal business on facebook!" Well! I'll be! So I tried calling him and he didn't answer and that's when I decided I couldn't do it anymore. My friend and I planned a recon mission into O-side to get my plates back. We were simply going to unscrew them from the car. And if you're wondering if this is illegal, it's not. Those plates belong to me, are registered to me, and thus are legally my property. Also, the car title had not been transferred over to his name yet so technically I still had a small claim to the car as well. So we did it. 12 AM in my black truck, we snuck over to where my car was parked armed with screwdrivers and simply reclaimed my personal property.

I found DH's grease paint from boot camp in his old sea bag and decided to play around with it. Now first of all, I have never worn grease paint in my life and I have no clue how to appropriately apply it so that it doesn't make me look like a green zebra. But whatever. There you have it. Secret Recon Mission to O-side was a success.

And I woke up the next morning to see that apparently I had ruined his entire day and he was depressed and was losing his mind. Did I feel a little bit bad? Yes, I did. Actually, I felt terrible. But you know, I can't be responsible for him anymore. I gave him 14 days to go and get his temporary pass and he decided that weekend sex excursions to San Diego and 29 Palms was more responsible than making sure he wasn't illegally operating a motor vehicle. So I washed my hands of him.