Things we have learned so far this week:

- Our mail carrier has been leaving our mail IN OUR GARAGE instead of IN OUR MAILBOX. (There’s a slot through which the mail was forced.) Just once or twice a week. For the last several months. (Our garage is used for storage; we go out there very rarely. And while we had noticed some missing mail, we thought it was a problem with the sender, not the delivery.) Passive-aggressive? Or just… thinking outside the box?

- The DMV thought I should really renew my license in person. Again. Like they’ve made me do the last two times in a row. I assume this is their way of acknowledging my grey hairs and the lines around my eyes, as these did not show up in my last license photo.

- The DMV would have liked me to renew my license sometime before last week, when, on my birthday, my license expired. I would have known this if the notice had been delivered to my mailbox. Instead of, you know, TO MY GARAGE.

- Dane and the kids can play mad libs in the car for hours, when necessary. Or while waiting optimistically, in the hopes the line at the DMV might go faster than advertised.

- In line at the DMV, I look like a good person to talk to.

- In line at the DMV, the thing you say to me will be, “D’you think we’ll get through this line before your baby’s born?” Or alternatively: “D’you think your baby will be born before we get through this line?” Another possibility would be: “How long until your baby’s due? You think we’ll be out of here by then?”

- The answer is some variation on I WILL MAKE NO GUARANTEES.

- And anyway, the joke’s on them; that line lasted longer than two out of my four labors. Add in another forty minutes or so, and any one of my kids could have been born in the time we stood there.

- That may not exactly be the same thing as the joke being on them.