Card carrying vigilante....

I was too busy minding the UPS man's business when it arrived.
Eyes fixated on the legs I could see in the back of the truck through it's open doors, I wondered why he was parked there and if perhaps he was behind the disappearances of not one but three different trash bins in less than a year. I wondered if I should be pro-active and go Citizen's Arrest all over his uniformed self in an effort to detain him and search his vehicle for my missing garbage cans. Also, so I could finally say I'd placed some one under citizen's arrest. I mean some one who wasn't family. In case I haven't said it before there is nothing more satisfying than jacking the arm of your Aunt Ruthie, who picked nibbles of pie from your plate one too freaking many times, up behind her back as you holler in her ear, "ARREST ARREST, CITIZEN'S ARREST!!!"
Satisfying that is, until she laughs because she thinks you're joking....and you have to ease up on the arm because deep down you're not joking and think Aunt Ruthie would look nice with iron bars in front of her face. HER face and not your own so it's best to stop these things before the authorities have to get involved. She really would by the way, look amazing behind iron bars. I'm not saying I don't love Aunt Ruthie I'm just saying I'd love her more if she was in jail and I had all the pie to myself.
So obviously, with deep thoughts such as these, my eyes trained steadily and unblinking on the UPS man's legs that were looking more and more nefarious by the second I did not see the exact moment when my husband pulled our mail out of our mail box.
I did not hear him for a few moments either, as the constant muttering, the litany of "Whatareyouupto? Huh? Citizen's Arrest! Make a move UPS man, make a move!", that I ran though just under my breath obscured his words from me.
When finally the haze of suspicion that had gathered thick about my head like a storm cloud was penetrated by my husband's excited voice I broke my stare and turned to bright blue eyes.
"Huh? Wha?" I said. Which I know sounds rather oaf like but I swear I said it in the most lady like, most dulcet, non-evil thought having, way a wife can.
"What's this?" He says with a sly look and a careless wave of his hand, flourishing the envelopes from the mailbox the way a magician wields his cards. My eyes track the movement, they zero in on the top envelope, my name leaps out at me and then the logo. The return address pierces my heart with a little zing, a thrill that makes me say "MINE!" as if I was suddenly channeling a 2 year old and I snatched the envelope.
I've gotta tell you, that was one hard to open envelope. It just did not work. Yet another supposedly inanimate thing was defying my will but I wrestled with it. I tore it open like a T-Rex would bust open open a Hadrosaur. Not a pretty image but accurate.
When finally, bits of envelope littering the front seat like confetti, and all thoughts of suspicious UPS men on possible lunch breaks, or garbage can purloining missions, or maybe even being under cover secret service on stake out at the end of our driveway had finally fled my head completely, I hastily unfolded the letter inside.
And there it lay, gleaming up at me. Shiny and new with my own oddly stoned looking face looking back at me. Eyes forever caught in the beginnings of a sleepy blink, my face, my card, my driver's license. Sweetest piece of plastic I ever slobbered all over in the front seat of a Civic.
Sure I had passed the driver's test and the tester had checked the "pass" box on my paper work. Sure I have been legally a fully licensed driver for over a week already....but it's not the same. Just like placing Aunt Ruthie under citizen's arrest for willful cookie snatching and un-lawful sharing of privately owned perfectly sweetened coffee...it's not the same as the REAL thing. The actual physical proof in your own hands, be it a California issued driver's license or hand cuffs The feeling is outta this fricking world..........
Since it bears repeating...I got my driver's license.
Now I can chase down garbage bin thieves on wheels, not just feet.

Working Title: License to Flaunt

Possible Alternates: "I'm on a roll", "Wheely happy", "I'm a happy jalopy", "Driving my own Destiny" or my favorite "Finally oh fricking finally I got the same dang piece of paper (soon to be plastic card) that every other kid and their sister and 4th cousin twice removed got when they were 16 and I some how managed not to until I'm 31 but it's all cool now cause they can go suck it and the cars they rode in on!"
Today I drive free.
Today I can go down to the car and slip the key into the ignition and roll smoothly down the driveway with nothing but my own off key humming to accompany me.
Not that I want to, it's just knowing that I CAN. The devil inside, who so often voices it's own opinion, prompts me to admit I suppose I could have done that any time but let me add that now I can LEGALLY. You know, it's a lot like illegally only less nerve wracking and less bail.
Today I got my license and didn't slobber grateful kisses all over the testing lady.
Today I swallowed fear like it was made of cookie dough, jamming it down into the very pit of my stomach where I chained it, lashed it, tied it up with guts and a sprinkling of positive attitude that was 10 months in the making.
Little motes of good thoughts and pink globs of husbandly love fluttered about my head as my cheeks flamed, my lips dried and my eyelashes tried to once again assault my own eyeballs, all part of a scheme to undermine my confidence. But I willed the panic away, I ignored the sweat, I smiled at the other DMV-ers and not a single snarl escaped my lips when we literally waited an eternity for my turn with the tester.
AN ETERNITY, to most it appeared just an hour, but my husband and I know different, it was an eternity. And it was a test beyond the test.
The focus of the day was the behind the wheel test of course but the Universe was also there, testing my will, my spirit and my resolve. I am pretty sure that as the DMV-er's kids shrieked like demented monkeys, running about the front of the building as their parents idly watched, that the universe was also watching me. Perhaps in it's eyes I was the demented monkey screeching kid who should know better than to disobey it's parents. It kept a keen eye on me to see what I was gonna do, was I going to crack and run away screaming...or stay and take the dreaded test?
I saw it, to every one else it was but a single shiny black crow perched on the edge of the DMV building, but our gazes locked and I knew it was actually the Universe. I may not get an officially stamped piece of paper at the end of IT'S test but I would get to wave the finger of my choice in fear's face.
The universe made that eternity, that endless stretch of time happen. Poking and prodding at my fear, seeing if it would grow and blossom into the dark bloom of terror that it has in the past. But it didn't. I met the Universe's test head on and acknowledged what it was doing. The crow cawwwed, a universal laugh of amusement. Muscles will grow weak and floppy like wet noodles if unused, the universe was providing me an extra opportunity for muscle building. Thanks...I think.
Nerves may have stretched but I'll be damned if they snapped.
I don't mind admitting the nerves. In fact to deny them would remove all the awesomeness of my feat from today. My nerves were giant red pulsing things that snarled like monsters and chewed away at my resolve. I smacked said nerves in their beasty faces with a little standard transmission know-how and old fashioned logic. I COULD DO THIS. Nerves can not deny logic.
Once upon a time moving the car mere feet in the drive way caused me great agonies the likes of which the Victorian ladies of by-gone swooning days could have related to.
Once upon a time the idea of stopping the car on a hill and starting again with out rolling backwards for ever and eventually crashing into something made my hands shake and heart stutter.
Once upon a time I navigated through traffic with arms so stiff they ached when we came home and I named my own sore ankles "clutch foot".
But 10 months passes and as my husband said many a time in a constant cheerful tone, an un-wavering will of support, "We're eating an elephant sweetie. One bite at a time, that's all you can do."
So I bit off moving the car and I swallowed it and damned if it didn't taste like the best fudge brownie you never had.
I hauled at the stopping and starting the car on a hill with my teeth, ripping it to shreds until my stomach was full and the drive around town no longer seemed like a series of straight stretches punctuated by hills of fear and incessant praying that the light didn't go red before I got to it so I wouldn't have to stop and start again right there because Lord help me some buffoon actually thinks they get to drive on this road too and actually has the audacity to be right behind me and what's he gonna say when he gets a face full of my fender?
Driving through traffic became less of a physical exercise and I joyfully gulped down long stretches of street, highway and freeway. I sucked them down like vanilla milkshakes and one day, I found myself chatting about all the miscellanea of life to my husband as we navigated through rush hour traffic, chatting idly about the President, food dyes and peroxide powered jet packs. And I marveled at how that could be?
HOW could that be? How can one go from driveway near hysteria to downshifting through the busy intersection on a Friday evening. Because I was eating the elephant. And it tasted gooooooooooooooood.
But the real test, the behind the wheel of the car with a complete stranger who isn't my husband, test was yet to come. And after years of agonizing, worrying and building up the moment to such a momentous mountain to climb...it was over.
OVER!
15 years, 1 week and 13 minutes later and the tester lady was saying that I could practice stopping just a little more smoothly and I was biting my tongue, and swallowing hard to keep down my elephant and finally blurted "Did I pass?"
And she said...."Yes."
Did I hear angels singing and a chorus of otherworldly creatures cheering me on? Or was that just the pinging and twanging of my facial muscles smiling so hard that they popped and sprung free like over tightened guitar strings? (I am sure I will now need a face cast.)
My husband saw me coming, and he knew I passed. Smiles can spread good news faster than a single syllable word.
So we celebrated.
By driving some more of course, for the hell of it instead of practice. We bought arty/crafty magazines and headphones for the ipod. We dined at El Torito because it turns out elephant isn't as filling as you might think.
And every second thing I have said today has been "I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I called my Mom and bragged.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I updated my facebook status message.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I bebopped around the kitchen like I was the first person ever to figure out how to drive a car and be legally licensed to do so. Then I had leftover birthday cheesecake.
By the way, I got my license today.

The parallels between parking and crime.

(the face of crime today)

I was wedged between two garbage cans, the front end of the sweet little Honda at an almost perfect 45 degree angle. Back end doing a good impression of the cheese in the sandwich of garbage cans. Front end poking out at the afore mentioned angle and quite possibly over the yellow line in the middle of the street.
And the telltale symbols of a police car were fast approaching in my rearview mirror.
If my palms were any sweatier I'd start giving serious consideration to some sort of moisture retrieval device because California suffers from droughts you know and my palm sweat just might keep us all in avocados and oranges for another year.
The back alley of a shopping complex is a strange place to spend any amount of time. All kinds of odd characters end up walking through.
Like teenagers.
I saw at least 4 of them, though not together, but 4 I am pretty sure constitutes a gang. They may have just been headed to the movie theater down the street and maybe they were and not up to anything nefarious but one of them had a skateboard...A SKATEBOARD. And though I didn't get a good look at it I can surmise from him being a teenager taking a shortcut down the back alley of a shopping center and from the thundering of my heart that he was at the very least sporting some sort of flaming skull sticker on the underside of his skateboard and at most going to see an "R" rated movie. There could be ta ta's and liberal use of the "F" word in said movie. Which now that I think of it was probably why he was in such a hurry, whizzing by at breakneck speeds of at least 1.2 miles an hour on his quite possibly flaming skull festooned skateboard.
And I was wedging our sweet little Honda between two garbage cans.
And my heart was pounding with a combination of nerves, excitement and a dash of paranoia. A potent cocktail of emotions.
The garbage cans are important to this tale. As they were brought from home.
Never have I felt more criminal then when we took 2 large rolling garbage bins from the back seat of our car and placed them in the back alley of the shopping center. I was half sure the workers taking smoking breaks in the back of the grocery store would come over and place me under citizen's arrest for intent to use a privately owned trash can in a public setting without a permit. I was alarmed when they didn't, assuming of course that they were video-ing my felonious use of home owned trash cans for some sinister purpose like posting on Youtube or selling back to me in a blatantly blackmail-esque scheme....or......maybe they were just calling the cops. Avoiding physical and verbal contact with me all together.

Perhaps they glanced across the empty parking lot to the little street I'd arranged my trash cans on and was wedging my car between and could see that I was Canadian. Which means I'm hardy and can withstand freezing temperatures and possibly wrestle polar bears and maybe....just maybe they saw in that one nervous glance they shot my way...in that moment when our eyes connected that I was some one who had the notable distinction of having watched EVERY episode of the first generation of Power Rangers, except for the one where they got the green ranger, and knew I could probably do some serious back alley street fighting if need be. (I have to take a moment and curse pre-vcr and pre-dvr days. Damn you archaic past with no means of recording the Power Rangers, especially the episode when they got the green ranger...damn you.)

Having this entire mental battle with possible gang members and do-gooder store employees whilst I do something out of the norm in a back alley rarely used street played on my nerves. So when I saw that car in my rear view mirror, the cop car, silently stalking up the hill behind me, Officer inside most likely coming to arrest me for taking our garbage cans on a public outing, for subjecting the fine citizens of Oceanside to strange parking and unusual use of a Honda, I was damn near frozen with fear. The car came closer and I winced and gritted my teeth and tried my best not to fling myself out of our vehicle and onto the hood of a moving Police vehicle begging for mercy. Then I wavered, the car drew almost level with ours and I bit my tongue trying not to have my fear twist around inside me and morph into defensive anger resulting in me spewing my annoyance at having a Cop disrupt my work by showing off my impressive vocabulary of 4 letter words.
And he drove by.
What the.......fricking hell?
Did that cop NOT notice that I was in the midst of some seriously sloppy parallel parking? Was he not at all concerned about the possible threat I posed, hauling my own trash cans miles from home to an empty street with convenient parallel parking along the sides? Was me sticking my trash cans out there, subjecting the world to their unusual presence, obviously pretending they were cars to park between, not of criminal importance?
Seriously?
I mean I had an escape route all picked out, I was grabbing hold of my honey and prepared to haul my ass and his over the sandy embankment, weaving between the palm trees until we hit the highway at which point we were going to start thumbing a ride to Mexico, Cuba or Canada. I can not reveal which, as this pretty much constitutes all of my secret escape plans, and if I told you which location I was headed for you could be coerced into revealing that fact and I might very well end up prosecuted for such crimes as practicing parallel parking between trash cans.
My husband says I should not worry. And that the Cop just rolled on by all casual like with out so much as a blurp from his siren or flash of his lights because he obviously summed up the situation. That we were practicing parallel parking in a safe, out of the way location. And we were using trash cans instead of stranger's cars so as to minimize the potential damage.
Hmm. Possibly.
OR he could have been radioing us in and calling for backup, having seen the same thing the store employee saw when he flicked a glance at me from behind his standard issue cop sunglasses.
Alan says that gnawing, palm sweating edge of my seat ready to strike a Power Ranger pose feeling is just nerves. Driver's inexperience. A case of too much embarrassment.
I think it's because a part of my brain knows that I most definitely must be committing some sort of crime. I have to be.
Why else would it feel so crime-y?
I just can not bring myself to believe that the only one with a problem about practicing parallel parking with trash cans is me. I am sure it is an issue that is weighing heavily on every one's minds.
The skateboarder kid probably went home early from the movie, unable to concentrate on on the ta ta's and spent the evening polishing his flaming skull thinking about me. Me parking the car parallel style. And the cop has got to be kicked back in his lazy boy recliner, dog chewing on his handcuffs, the Evening News a low murmur in the back ground accompanying the rapid flip of pages as he thumbs through his Cop rule book. Looking for the law that says practicing parallel parking with trash cans is wrong. I have seen the tv shows. I KNOW how this works, a judge some where is on hold, growing increasingly frustrated with me, a person he's never met, as he waits for the Cop to find the law so he can issue the warrant and they can come haul me and my trash cans away to jail. I am not sure I have enough bail money for all three of us.
Alan says nobody cares if a beginner driver practices parking in a parking lot, that we're not all born just knowing instinctively how to parallel park. He gently points out again the only one acting oddly is me........ Hmmmmm.
Tomorrow I am going to go practice parallel parking again. I am defying the fear, of either embarrassment or of going to jail for playing with my trash cans in public. Either way I'm overcoming the nerves. Perhaps I'm cut out for a life of crime after all.

Stopping Stalling.....

The measure of personal success is how many times you've stalled in life..or just in the car.
In my case I am down to zero stalls a day. Wow, I know, who knew the gear grinding, abrupt bone rattling herky jerky motion of the car seizing up when I release the clutch too fast was actually a working metaphor for life. (as well as an obvious measure of my driving prowess)
To think that I went from an average of 7 stalls a day (ok maybe it was more like 12) to zero in under 2 months is astounding. What's this? Every one and their dog drives, big frigging deal?
Out! Git you outta my blog, it IS a big deal.
The whole fricking world is full of things that *every one* just does, just blusters through as if it's easy squeezy puddin' n' pie while a few of us watch in wide eyed horror as all their teenaged hooligan acquaintances go from zero to 60 miles an hour in the single breath of blowing out their 16 birthday candles.
SOME of us didn't run around charged up on hormones and sugar laden soft drinks and cheesy Dorito chips and hot cinnamon gum with music blasting their own personal anthem through earphones whilst tooling about in their parent's car.
SOME of us some how missed the typical teenage boat that carried all their car driving friends away whilst you stood on the shores of self pity consoling yourself with ice cream that was heavily laden with your own salty tears. Not because you wanted to drive too, but because you just didn't *get* this pulsating desire of every one else to drive, it costs money, you need a vehicle and on top of that one that works for more than 2 weeks at a time. My parents were cool folks but God love em they couldn't keep a car working even if their ability to get to and from town and work depended on it, which it did....
So years can easily past, the kids you baby sat for think it's a riot that you're over 16 and don't drive, they pepper you with incessant questions like "don't you want to drive?" "are you evvvvvvvvvver going to get your license??" "No really, you don't have your license? why? why? why?" "why are you stalling? whyyyyy?"
It's questions like those that put the sit back in baby sitting, nothing like squashing a small child under a mound of pillows, unanswered questions and your own weight. (no children were permanently harmed in the making of my life)
Time marches by in the quirky mind messing way it does where you realize your high school friends are now out of college, the kids you baby sat for are 16 and before you can say vrooom vrooom they're tearing up the roads, brand spankin' new licenses burning holes in their pockets as they too partake in the joys of free-wheelin' freedom and you realize...holy crap. The sweet little youngin's who used to sit on your lap and watch Disney movies are now licensed??
The gap between the mysterious car driving awareness age of 16 and your own oldering years widens. What seemed crazy when you were a kid seems next to impossible when you're pushing 30 and then...sitting smack dab on TOP of thirty, enjoying the view and the super powers every 30 year old acquires.
So I set a goal for myself, I will get my license, but first I had to get my California Beginner's. No more stalling unless it was literally in the car. My first discovery is y'all don't call it a beginner's down here, it's a learner's permit. This newly acquired information sends me into spasms of anxiety for at least a week. The second thing I am informed rather morosely by the DMV worker is that I need a social security number, an American one.
As if I don't have enough *necessary* papers by now.... I'm so glad that I have an entire folder full of papers and documentations and Identifications to prove that I exist. I'd hate to have to rely on my own physical being, my flesh and blood and sweat and tears to prove that I am indeed real, and certainly not a figment of any one's imagination.
Life is strange...
I'm getting it tattooed on my head, swear to Gawwwd, one of these days you're going to see a crazed woman throwing back coffees and muttering to herself about idiot drivers and you'll know it's me. No, not because of the extra glint of insanity that shines with in my eye, not the hair for sure as I might pull it all out by then, no, you'll recognize me by the tattoo in lovely Edwardian Script across my forehead..."Life is Strange" Pretty but practical, having one's personal motto so "in your face" so to speak.
I wonder if when we die and go to heaven God makes you fill out a form in triplicate and give fingerprints...I'd ask a dead relative but none of them ever haunt me.....
But anyways all the teeth clenching, nerve stretching time it took to work myself up to writing the California's driver's test was for naught as I now had to get a SSN card. Oh joy...... but time passes. In the mean time I practice not stalling the car in the drive way...that's right! My husband started teaching me to drive before I even got my license. (cause we're rebels that way...You get the irony here right?....woman waits till she's freakishly afraid to drive and past 30 to start getting her license and considers herself a rebel??? hmm)
I practiced my clutching and non-stalling techniques in the drive way every day. I practiced backing up, turning around and parking. I can do a 3 point turn but my specialty is the 7.5 point turn. I practiced stopping the car on the steep incline and starting it with out rolling backwards (we have a standard transmission in case that isn't obvious by now).
Then I practiced not hyperventilating when the car rolled back the first time I tried stopping on the hill and taking off but ended up rolling backwards and then stalling the car in a shuddering bucking heap of metal that I mimicked by shivering uncontrollably and gasping great car scented breaths. Good times....
Who knew the driveway was so damn exciting. But 2.5 months of checking the mail box every day for my dang SSN number paid off because ...I'm gonna say it...I made that driveway my beeee-otch. That driveway shudders in fear when it sees me coming...ohhh yeaaaaah.
So here I was 2.5 months later, brand new SSN number in hand and I am back to square one, which is in line at the DMV, overworked brain trying desperately to recall the 5 million different speed limits for different roads (65 for the freeway unless otherwise posted, 55 for undivided high ways in case you're curious, 15 miles an hour when approaching a blind intersection, 25 in a residential or school zone and zero if you're parked)
Oh and don't think I didn't notice how the universe threw me that damn SSN card curve ball, nothing like an enforced wait before doing something that makes you disgustingly nervous, as in sitting in a pool of what's hopefully your own sweat and gibbering like a fool next to your beloved sweetums who has more faith in your memory than you do type nervousness.
Of course the wait is fairly long despite the amazingly controlled and professional atmosphere of the DMV. I gotta say, all the crap I have heard about DMVs and this one was like an anti-DMV. I thought I'd be waited on by Satan and poked with a red hot pitchfork or something from the way people go on about the DMV. Not so though, people were polite, it was relatively quiet and the lines moved at a steady pace, lots of television screens so you could see as well as hear your number being called. Why if they'd had a hot pretzel stand I might even consider going back just for the hell of it, a nice Tuesday afternoon date with my husband so we could take in the free show that is the theatre of life!
Finally it's my turn to have my thumb print taken, my photo snapped (great idea by the way, blind the person who is about to take the written test....thanks again universe)
I take the test and my first horror is realizing the test sheet is long and rectangular, I was prepared for a wide rectangular, not skinny rectangular. I resist the urge to erupt into a wailing mass of female hysteria and biting my lip I forge ahead in a truly inspiring display of nerves. (well inspiring for me.)
Waiting inline to have my test corrected takes an eternity, this is no fault of the DMV but my own flustered brain that is trying not to second guess every answer I gave, trying not to wonder if the old man behind me is slowly inching closer so he can perhaps cop a feel or sneak a peek at my answers, both a no no in my book.
The DMV lady takes my test and I proceed to hold my breath so that not a single sound escapes from my body as I strain my ears to hear the words that will mark my fate.....pass or fail? Pass or fail?
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY LADY DID I PASS OR FAIL? Screamed silently into the darkness inside my brain of course. As if sensing the impending crack in my composure she flicks a glance up at me and casually dishes out my much anticipated grade.
"Pass."
I grin, one of those lip stretching wide faced grins that probably bares too many teeth and looks a tad maniacal but I can't help it. She's drawn a smiley face on my test and all I can say in my coolest voice possible, as if 30 year old women write their driver's permit exam every day is "oh, look a smiley face." BRILLIANT!
I am brilliant, I am conversing, I am awash with joy and finally as she mutters on about needing a licensed driver over 18 in the car with me at all times while driving I look harder at my test and see that my score is........ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
I am a DMV driver's handbook genius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am road ready.
I have a full year before my learner's permit expires in which to practice driving and one day....one fine golden sun filled day I will get that damn piece of plastic that separates me from every one else and I will be..a fully licensed driver....muahh ahhhh ahhhhh.
No longer am I stalling, nope I'm revving my engines and popping it into 1st gear and coasting down the drive way of life at hair raising speeds of over 5 miles an hour.
Sweeeeeeeeeet.