Autopilot

I am in such a daze today that I’m not even sure what happened last week. Canada Post is still on strike, and I think are due back to work on Tuesday. If our carrier doesn’t look disgruntled, I shall get the skinny on the strike for you. All I know is last week he looked mighty sad and sighed and said he just came to deliver pension checks, and I thought that was generous for folks on strike. At least they are thinking of the elderly.  I have nothing to wait for in the mail, so I’m rather relaxed about it. My days of getting excited about Chinese takeout menus are sadly behind me.

All I did this week was get even more baffled about road rules, prepare a dinner for some friends, and look for a new place to live. I continue to battle with my driving instructor. If anyone made a bobbing head hood ornament out of him, it would screech ‘Fail!’ every five minutes.  It has become such a bad habit that I’m inwardly mocking his tag line every time he takes an exaggerated deep breath.

I mean the guy tells me never to go on the bicycle lane. So I think I’m being brilliant and avoiding it. Then I have to turn right and I’m yelled at for not going all the way to the right—into the bicycle lane! It’s a no win situation. And I’m expected to stay on the right lane and merge if there are parked cars. I say, just turn onto the lane that has no parked cars—sure beats changing lanes! I need to get a job where I can make road rules.

I stupidly asked him if we could go on the highway so I could practice merging in high speeds and taking exits and what not. As luck would have it, it was pouring down with rain and everything was so gray, I couldn’t even see where my lane was. Between a lot of praying and not a lot of breathing, I survived that barely. After that excitement, we went into the suburbs.  I wanted to go on the highway again when the rain cleared, but for some reason, the instructor didn’t want to. Hmm.

All of a sudden, I realized that there was no squawking going on from the passenger side.  Surely, I couldn’t have gone five minutes without messing something up and getting scolded?  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the instructor’s head was bobbing down jerkily. The motion seemed even more exaggerated by the giant black visor he had on his temple. Please tell me I did not give this guy a heart attack.  Should I pull over? Call 911on my imaginary cellphone? I had no idea how to drive to the hospital. 

You got to be kidding me. Dude was asleep! I was let loose on Canadian roads, basically on autopilot. I felt like I was in that movie, you know, where the pilots get knocked out, the control tower is not responding, and the brunette flight attendant with big hair has to take the wheel, read a manual, paint her toe nails and land a jumbo jet full of hysterical passengers on a narrow gangway all by herself.

The smart thing to do would have been to wake him up, but I suddenly enjoyed being in control—also we were in a low traffic neighborhood.  I thought it would be good for me to get a feel of driving with him not messing with the wheel or his pedals. Childishly, I also enjoyed the fact that he screwed up—he was asleep on the job! Fail!

I followed his last instruction, ‘did I tell you to turn? No! If no one says anything, just go straight’. So I headed straight, literally for the hills. My smirking came to an abrupt end when I soon found myself in a high traffic area and he sprang into action just when I needed him to.

This lesson, he said ‘Fail!’, about forty-six times. I stole one line from him just to take the fun out of it for him, so it really would be forty-seven. Apparently,  I go too fast in playground zones and too slow on the highway. I turn left for right and right for left—I’m wondering if that’s covered under disability? I just can’t get it right when I’m on the road, pun intended.

I was really glad the lesson was over with, and the only thing the instructor and I agreed on was that I'd probably wind up in a mental institution at the end of the lessons. I was really emotionally exhausted when I got home and spent the rest of the day in a comatose like state—or as much as I could be in one with my three-year-old Lanes lurking about.  Moral of the story: driving makes me a zombie. I have another lesson this week. I hate it.

Also, if it’s any consolation, if I literally drive my instructor into early retirement, he can always get a job as a narcoleptic drill sergeant. ‘Drop and give me twenty. Zzzzz’. Or perhaps even a building inspector or something. I can get him a job in my building! ‘Fixing burst pipe with low grade duct tape. Fail!’. ‘Elevator eating up tenants. Fail!’. ‘No water on Tuesdays. Fail!’.

The rest of the week was better. We enjoyed our dinner party with our new friends, and last I heard I think everyone survived my cooking—I just made my entire limited repertoire. I actually made desert—a chocolate biscuit pudding, which even my fussy Lanes enjoyed. Whew! Her usual reaction to my creations is ‘hmm. No thank you Mamma’.

On Sunday we had a depressing run looking for a place to live.  The only thing I came back with was a headache. To make it worse I kept dreaming of the places we looked at. It was exhausting and apparently will be a lengthy process.  My diligent spouse, P, said we need to move by December to wherever Lanes has to go to elementary school. 

You know looking for a new place to live is trying and tiring when you come home to this crazy a$$ ghetto fabulous joint and think, ‘ah, it’s not so bad, why do we have to move?’. And then you hear someone screaming that they are stuck in the elevator in tune with the grumbling of the pipes in the hallway…more crazy adventures next week…