The cake my buddy from class gave me.
She is really the first *real* best friend I’ve had. We don’t agree on a few things- the loon thinks marijuana should be legal & that it “doesn’t hurt” anybody, she prefers hot weather, & well, hmmm Can’t think of anything else.
We get along, we look out for each other and she’s a great friend!
And just because I thought the pic was cute- Molly’s pup, guarding her bowl while sitting in *my* chair.
It was a decent day, 40 and all.
I had school and my best buddy brought me a funky little cake (pictures later), a Over the Hill balloon, & a bottle of prune juice. Heh.
Another friend gave me some assorted teas, coffees & chocolates.
Molly gave me a necklace, David gave me fuzzy pajamas (guess he was tired of me stealing his pajama pants when my legs were cold) and James gave me jeans, a pretty red shirt, a coat & gloves. I gave myself a fancy new coffee maker and some shoes last week.
I didn’t notice any new lines or wrinkles this morning and I covered up the shiny gray hairs last night.
I was breathing and nothing hurt, so I’m happy. 
Retired PO mentioned some of how/what he learned to drive down there in the post about my kid’s first driving experience and that made me realize how damned easy the kid has it.
My dad was pretty particular with his driving instruction. I had to pass several “tests” along the way.
First and foremost, I had to rotate the tires- with a jack- by hand.
I would have had to demonstrate knowledge of where all the fluids went and were to be checked- but I knew that part already. I was adding power steering fluid when I was 4.
I couldn’t learn to drive a smooth, up-to-date automobile, although we had 4 of them.
Oh no, I had to learn to drive a ‘49 Dodge pick-up truck.
3 speed on the column- kicker: to shift into a lower gear, you had to reach through the hole in the floor board and lift up on the transmission
the key didn’t crank it- cranking had to be done by lifting the left hood.
Power steering, power breaks- whatever your foot and arms could manage
Clutch- oh hell, I’m not even going there.
Needless to say, the lessons had excessive amounts of cursing involved. “Dammit Cindy, EASE off the clutch and give it a little gas!”. We’d lurch forward 3 feet and it would choke down. He’d slam the door shut, muttering profanities as he went around to crank it up again. “EASE off the damned clutch and give it a hell of a lot of gas!”. Lurch. Cuss. Slam. Cuss. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Cuss.
When I finally was able to keep the thing running and learned to just take my foot off the clutch with it running nearly wide open, he put me on the road. Straight aways went fine. But then, there was a curve. A pretty sharp curve, I should add.
“Turn the wheel & hit the brake.”.
“I am”
“”I am” it more then!”
“I am”
“TURN THE DAMNED WHEEL AND HIT THE SON OF A BITCHIN’ BRAKE!!!”
We made it, but cleaned out the ditch in the process. Addendum: We were both STANDING upon reaching the far side of the curve.
When I finally mastered the Dodge, I thought I’d arrived and could go back to driving the *good* cars.
Nothing doing.
He went out and found an out of service school bus. Early sixties model, with a manual transmission of course.
He said if I could learn to drive that, I would be able to drive anything and he’d never have to worry about me.
Thankfully, the key actually cranked this sucker. I puttered all over the farm (using that term VERY loosely) and he deemed me road worthy.
Oh yeah, I couldn’t just normally change the gears- double clutching was required. I was a slow double clutcher and would lose speed between depressions of the clutch. He’d make me stop & start over. Repeatedly.
I finally got pretty good at all of it and off we went. Made my turns good, got the hang of the double clutching system, didn’t drag the ass end of the bus through the ditch or over anything.
One particular trip, we headed down one of the local dirt roads. I was “cruising” along at about 35 mph and we met an old pick-up truck. I remember the faces of the guys in the truck perfectly. Their eyes got about as big around as dinner plates and I’m pretty sure you could have shoved one of the said plates into their mouths- as they were hanging open in absolute amazement of my rocking driving skills. Okay, okay. It was more like they were hanging open in absolute terror. Anyway…
they took for the ditch and we met- me in the middle of the dirt road, them straddling the ditch.
Daddy & I had to stop, we were laughing so damned much.
I finally mastered the bus and he was right- I’ve been able to drive anything I have been put in the seat to drive.
The Dodge & the bus are long since dead. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure he finally sold the Dodge for scrap. David won’t have any unique driving lessons like I did.
And really, he’s missing out.
Driving lessons were some of my favorite things. They gave me a chance to prove my head was just as hard as Daddy’s…and that’s what a lot of it was all about.
Yeah, yeah, the banner up there says it all.
However, I’m not there YET (albeit only one day away) and my children had better STOP talking to me louder & slower before I beat their butts to a pulp.
Smartass youngins.
Wonder where they got that from?
Nah, it wasn’t that bad.
The kid wasn’t actually thrilled today when I demanded he get behind the wheel though.
It’s very windy and that makes that van hard to keep between the lines sometimes.
And he’s used to driving Daddy’s little Red Rocket (the Mazda) and the van is much bigger.
But he made it from the grocery store parking lot to here without much trouble.
Only problem was wanting to stick to the white line, which I don’t care for.
We progressed from, “Watch the white line.” to “David. Stay off the line.” to “David, get off the damned white line and onto the actual road” to “Damnit David, get off the white line” to “Damnit all David! Get off the fucking white line, do you understand?”.
He was beaming ear to ear when we pulled into the driveway though and was more than pleased to tell his grandparents he’d made his maiden voyage without major incident.
Tomorrow we’ve got to run to the tiny “town” 7 miles away. I think we’ll take the Red Rocket for that trip & see how things go.
After 3 decades of Sexual Education has been being taught in public school, a great percentage of kids (yeah, 18-29- you’re still a kid) believe shit like having sex standing up will prevent pregnancy?
There really is no way to deal with ignorance, is there? You can educate until you’re blue in the face, but there will always be some folks who will never let it sink in.
>.<
Let’s see…
He didn’t get his license right after his birthday due to the holidays and the fact that he couldn’t get his “attendance report” from the school until after January 5th.
Tightwad wouldn’t pay for said attendance report until the middle of January.
I couldn’t get him to the Dept of Drivers’ Services until this past Tuesday.
And this past Tuesday he suffered from significant brain freeze and missed 5 questions when the maximum number he could miss was 4.
So, today I picked him up from school & he made another attempt…
and aced the test.
Therefore, I feel it’s my civic duty to inform all those of the world that he now has his license and everyone better watch out.
Oh, and as an aside, WordPress apparently thinks my reading audience isn’t intelligent enough to understand the words maximum & inform. It suggested most & tell instead, as maximum & inform are “complex” words. For the love of Pete. Sheesh.
think this school week would EVER end.
Shit, I’m tired.
I’m sick of rain.
I want a vacation.
On the bright side- only 5 more weeks this quarter, 25 weeks over-all.
After finals, I’ll have a couple of weeks off.
This school week DID finally end.
On a decent note even.
Goodnight!
That was where my ’specialty’ was today and I had a good day.
I expected to take x-rays or something. However, it seems “Techs” do that.
Nurses do cool stuff like assist with synovial cyst injections (super cool, doc worked back & forth with CT scans to see what he was doing), paracentesis & thoracentesis.
5 liters of fluid drained during the paracentesis and 3.5 liters drained from the thoracentesis with no panicking when the dude having the paracentesis had his blood pressure drop through the floor.
Scary part- I think I’m learning stuff too.
If you’re afraid, you’ll just have to overlook it.
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We use the words Shugah, Y'all, & Darlin' a lot.
Don't be fooled by our drawl- we may talk slow, but we think fast.