Need to type fast if I want this to count for today and not for tomorrow. I'm too tired to write much, anyway. It's been a long, exhausting, harrowing, miserable day, and about the only other thing that could have gone wrong would have been for me to get my period right smack dab in the middle of it. No doubt, that's what I'll wake up to greet in the morning.

It's embarrassing to admit the part of the day that was so very much my own fault, so I'll do it like ripping off a Bandaid. A couple of months ago, the tags on my car expired. I knew that I needed to renew them, but I balked; we were getting ready to move, and I didn't feel it was right to have to pay for a year's registration when we'd possibly only be here for a few more months. So I put off doing it. A week became two, which became a month.

(Bad Carrie. Very bad Carrie. I know this.)

So a month ago, I got pulled over by a policeman. Should have seen it coming, but it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I sighed, I whimpered, and the cop let me off with a warning ("I could tow your car right now," he said.) I went home, where Eric scolded me and told me that I needed to renew my tags first thing the next morning.

Had I been in my right mind, that's what I would have done. But I still hesitated. I still somehow looked at it as a waste of money, and every day that I didn't do it felt like one more day closer to the move to Wisconsin; in a way, I felt vindicated.

That was until today, when we were pulled over again. No warning this time. Eric, who was driving, got a hundred-dollar ticket.

He's irate, as he should be. I feel like the stupidest, most short-sighted person on the planet. I cried, beat myself up - heck, I'm still doing it. I can't believe that I was so incredibly dumb as to believe that procrastinating on this was going to save us money. It could have been much worse; they could have towed the car. A hundred dollars is still a lot of money, no matter how you look at it.

We spent the rest of the day fighting, which didn't help improve matters. When we came home, it was to find that not one person had attended our Open House. Then Sam, who'd been having a Toddler Day, continued to behave like a hellchild until finally collapsing on the couch between us (he refused to even close his eyes when I had tried to put him to bed a few hours before; "La-la-la-la-la!" he yelled as he kicked at the blankets). I let him sleep there for a while before trying to move him; I couldn't bear the thought of having to deal with him if he woke up again.

Eric and I tried to make up a bit after that, but we're both still feeling exhausted and a little hurt and angry. Honestly, the argument felt so much deeper than just being about a ticket; it encompassed all of the fights we've had recently. Neither of us feels appreciated; neither of us feels wholly loved. "How do we fix this?" Eric said. I didn't have an answer.

I hate this year.

The only good thing that happened today was waking up to a small amount of snow. Sam was beside himself when he looked out the window upon waking, and he was outside playing in it before nine o'clock. It was a much better scene than last year.