#65: Driving myself to distraction

Actual updates

I am just acknowledging it up front to get it out of the way: my birthday is coming up this month, again, and I will once again be older than I ever figured I would get. Perhaps I should start acting like it at some point. Not right now, though, I’m busy.

Okay! With that out of the way: let’s talk about driving.

I’ve finished my lessons, and I’ve booked my road test. With the usual schedule I keep in terms of publishing these, I will probably already have taken it by the time this sends. I’d better pass it in one go, too, because my permit expires exactly one week later and I don’t want to have to get it again before retesting.

But my teachers seem to think I’ve got what it takes! They have been very reassuring and kind, and both of the ones who worked with me on this round of lessons told me I have nothing to worry about when it comes to the test. We’ll see, of course.

But! But. Finally I have a Wacky Driving Lessons Story like everyone else on the planet of Earth.

Everyone does, right? I quizzed people awhile back and I feel like about two people did not. Every single other person that took some kind of driving lessons and wasn’t just taught by a family member (and even some of those ones too) had a story of some magnitude, ranging from “this person has some quirks and I’m learning all about them” to “oh no I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.” So I was a LITTLE nervous starting lessons. What kind of a person with outsized confidence in their own driving ability was going to be sitting in a car next to me? But I’ve been hugely in luck. No one creepy, no one unloading their weirdo beliefs on me, no one telling me to do anything unsafe or illegal. And I still don’t. But at the second-last lesson, something happened.

I got into the car, and the teacher I had had for several lessons in a row was sitting there - she’s lovely, by the way, and NOT a weirdo or creep or shady - and she was scratching madly at her face. “I’ve got hives,” she says. “It’s my allergies.”

She’s talked about her bad seasonal allergies in our past lessons together, but it usually manifests the normal way, plus tiredness, so hives is a whole new thing. It’s obviously really bothering her, and I offer to reschedule. No, she says, she can do it, but she’ll call it a day after our lesson and so I’ll need to pull the car around to the front of the building that the lesson place’s office is in (we meet in the parking lot out back) so that she can go in and let the boss know.

I do an extremely imperfect job of parking in front (I’ve only practiced parallel parking behind someone, not between two cars! That’s next level parking, I just need to pass the test!) and she runs in to have a word with her boss. She comes out holding a cold water bottle to her face and informs me that she has Taken The Benadryl.

Normally, she takes Claritin-D since it’s strong enough and doesn’t put her to sleep. Obviously, as a driving instructor, you need to be awake and on your game, so she can’t take stronger medications that cause drowsiness, but I guess this time it was bad enough that she had to risk it. Haha, I said, not joking at all, so if I see you dozing off, I’ll just bring us back here then shall I?

She was like yeah, if I slump against the door, you know what to do, and so I took the car out for an extremely chill and normal spin around the neighborhood, during which she scratched the absolute hell out of her face (I get it; when I’m itchy, I scratch in such a way as to try not to have skin), iced it with her water bottle, complained about the itch and the sting, called her husband to let him know she was going to go to the urgent care afterwards, called him again to say actually, she was going to go to the hospital afterwards - I thought I might have to end up driving her to the hospital and leaving her off there, but it was all right and we just ended the lesson a bit early back at the lessons place.

What was impressive was how she would SNAP into teacher mode when it was time to practice a parallel park or a 3-point turn. The tone of her voice would switch from suffering to crisp and clear, and she’d be fully alert and on her game. Then, once the manoevre was complete, she’d slump back into her miseries. Talent.

Anyway, I did take my test, and I did not pass it - did just about as bad of a job of parallel parking that anyone could do without hitting something - and in one sense that’s fine, because all I have to do is retake it and not make the same mistakes, and everything else was good enough so I’ll pass. But in another sense it’s annoying, and in another sense it’s really, really depressing.

It’s annoying because my permit is about to expire, and there’s a mandatory two-week wait between test attempts, and that means I won’t get to try again on this permit. I’ll first need to get a new permit (it’s one of those things that you can’t renew, you just have to get a whole new one each time). So it adds time and hassle, and that’s obnoxious.

It’s depressing for a different reason, though, and not entirely a rational one. I was ready to check this box and move onto the next boxes in terms of the move. I biffed it, and it feels like the final kick in the balls for that dream. Sure, it probably isn’t, but it felt like I had a very limited window to accomplish it in, at least this year, and I couldn’t do it through various personal failings (procrastination in the first place, and then incompetence in the second), so now I’ll never get to do it. I cried a little. I’ve been replaying the mistakes I made over and over. If only I had started out closer to the parked car in the first place. If only I had done fewer corrections. If only, if only. I’m going to walk into the sea, you know?

What am I reading

I took a day off to catch up on some reading and made some progress but immediately fell off again afterwards; I think I need a week of just reading, instead. Maybe a month.

Right now I’m rereading A History of the World in 12 Maps by Jerry Brotton, but it’s been donkey’s years since I read it the first time so it’s the next closest thing to reading it new. It’s deeply interesting in the ways you might expect - how do the kinds of maps people made in different cultures at different points in history reflect the way they thought of the world, how good were the ancients at calculating the size of the earth (depending on which ancient you asked, the answer is anywhere from “ehhhh…” to “pretty damn good, in fact”), how did people deal with the areas on the globe that they had never been to, what direction were their maps oriented and why. Just a completely fascinating subject.

Also. ALSO! In the very introduction of the book, there’s a remark that prefigures the whole “Gulf of America” foofaraw: But it seems more likely that the corporate interests of multinational companies will bring a new world of online maps in which access is prescribed by financial imperatives, subject to political censorship and indifferent to personal privacy. POLITICAL CENSORSHIP YOU SAY. This book was published in 2012, in case that’s interesting to anyone.

Anyway! I like maps and I like history and I like thinking about the places where they intersect, so I like this book (although I do not like the T-O map! it unsettles me in my spirit!!).

Some links

Relevant!! And also a bit calming because at least I do not have all of THIS to worry about. License to Drive, Italian-Style

Dreams are so poorly understood by science - but they’re very well understood by various belief systems (if also in conflict with each other’s understanding). There’s a part in here that will make you scream, though, about the usual suspects looking into ways to make people productive while dreaming. God forbid anyone spend any of their time not creating shareholder value!! Bringing Back the Magic of Dreaming

Doesn’t this seem like a better way to go when it’s time to go? And it’s not an assisted suicide situation, and it’s not exactly a hospice, but it just represents a different attitude towards the inevitable end of a life. “You Can Let Go Now”: Inside the Hospital Where Staff Treat Fear of Death as Well as Dying

The title gives the wrong impression - it isn’t about some type of haunted phone, it’s about the information desk at a university, and the people it serves and the types of questions they answer. It’s very interesting (but NOT haunted!). The Alabama Landline That Keeps Ringing

This makes me glad I never had “smart dining room table” money. It was kind of handy to see what temperature it was in the house from my phone, back when we had a Nest thermostat, although now that we replaced it (apparently it doesn’t work with modern boilers) I don’t miss it much, and that’s the extent of my house’s intelligence. Why the Ultrarich Are Unplugging from “Smart Homes”

Speaking of money. Everyone in this story is the worst and deserves their ignominy. They Stole a Quarter-Billion in Crypto and Got Caught Within a Month

Back when I was getting married, The Knot was understood to be the traditional, rules-based, you-need-to-buy-this-thing-or-your-wedding-doesn’t-count website (I was an Indiebride girlie). Apparently it’s actually worse: Does The Knot Have a “Fake Brides” Problem?

I’m so horrified about the ease and prevalence of AI deepfakes, particularly in terms of porn. This story is chilling. It also cements my feeling that a lot of guys need to go outside and talk to people in real life. When they sit around online talking only to people who are just like them, they can say stuff like this without realizing it is incredibly creepy. Or they do realize it’s creepy and want that reaction! Either one is bad! “I Want to Make You Immortal”: How One Woman Confronted Her Deepfakes Harasser

Capybara infestation in a wealthy subdivision!! Hundreds of Giant Rodents “Conquered” This Town. Now What?

On trying not to beat yourself up for your body, especially not in front of people who are just learning what they think about their own bodies. On looking at yourself naked. On Hornby Island, a place where I had one of the few purely magical experiences of my adolescence. The Never-Ending Scrutiny of Being in an Aging Body

Surprisingly, this isn’t about how so many bird names sound rude. It’s about fussy grammatical arguments between ornithologists and whether or not something is named after a horrible guy, and whether it’s maybe better to use the name that regular people call the bird rather than its government name. The Naming of Birds is a Difficult Matter

You know Barbra Streisand cloned her dogs? Double or Nothing

On Tove Jansson and all the other gay people who wrote your favorite children’s books. The Time of Tove

This isn’t a problem I’m facing yet, but who’s to say what the future holds. My parents aren’t “difficult,” per se, although I don’t relish making my dad do something he doesn’t want to do (at least he’s sensible about needing to do various unpleasant things, at least now). They don’t require care, yet. They’re definitely aging, though. I think about this kind of thing. How to Be a Caregiver to Aging, Difficult Parents

Hey, want to hear from some actual astronauts who went to actual space? Starliner’s Flight to the Space Station Was Far Wilder Than Most of Us Thought

Dengue fever!! My dad had it when we lived in Indonesia and it was bad. You do not want it. A Deadly Mosquito-Borne Illness Rises As the US Cuts All Climate-Health Funding

Polluted waters in Florida are causing mass starvation among manatees. I should warn you that the first thing you’ll see when you click on this is a dead manatee, and there are other distressing photos within as well; if you’re able to withstand those, it’s a detailed exploration of how we got to where we are. Wasting Away

Tunes I’ve been listening to lately

Had an unexpected Cake rabbithole this month. This song was nearly constantly coming out of my friend’s stereo in high school for a good few months and now it’s back in my head.

As you know, I feel that I personally am very seagull-coded.

Do not read anything into this! It is simply a great song about being a huge fan of cunnilingus!!

This month’s top 5: Things I thought I would have done by now

1. moved, goddamn

2. written a whole ass book, instead of ¾ of a book that is, nonetheless, ass

3. been able to play guitar, not just plunk out a few chords (yes this would require work and practice but what if it just… happened?)

4. traveled more instead of less

5. died

For that matter, here’s the top 5 things I did NOT think I would have done by now

1. published a short story (both because I didn’t think I’d get published ever, and because I didn’t think of myself as much of a short story writer)

2. had friends who genuinely enjoyed my company and weren’t just putting up with me or embarrassed by me

3. been in a band

4. had a kid (I don’t mean Hap was an accident, just that I did not go through my life intending and expecting to become a parent at some point. I didn’t think that was a path I would walk)

5. experienced Gender Thoughts in any serious way

Obviously some of these are the kind of thing it’s nice to be wrong about!

Well, the horrors keep horroring, the phones keep ringing (right? it isn’t just me ringing them?), the work keeps working, and we keep each other alive. I’m going outside.

p.s. I got through this issue with not one single footnote. Who am I anymore.