Ramblings from the Hole in the Ground

The process of getting Mandy a driver's license has been a long one. She finally got her license on Monday, yeah. Up until then I was going mad. Driving her to school in the morning (20 minutes) driving home (20 minutes). Driving to her school to pick her up in the afternoon (20 minutes) driving home (20 minutes). Driving her to work (20 minutes in the other direction) driving home. Driving to her work to pick her up late at night (20 minutes) and driving home (20 minutes). I was so excited that she got her license, I thought at the very least I could give her my keys and while I wouldn't have my car at least I could get some work done.

But, Mandy isn't ready to drive on her own. She isn't ready to even drive with me in the car as practice going to and from school and work. Everyday she says tomorrow. So hopefully today she will do some actual driving. I have a lot of empathy, perhaps too much because I really don't like driving either. Funny thing is that all this driving Mandy around, and this has been going on for years, has increased my ease behind the wheel. Perhaps once she starts to do the chore her skills and confidence will improve too. It was really hard for me when we moved here after living in Japan for four years. I hadn't really driven more than a couple of times per month and there we drove on the other side of the road, and the Japanese are much better drivers, there wasn't any tailgating or people drifting into my lane while talking on the cell phone like here. Well you probably remember all my complaining when we got here, right.

In the mean time I have been working very hard trying to get a car for Mandy. The girl has been working since she was 12. Doing her paper route, summer jobs, and for the last two years she has been working at a grocery store as a cashier. She has saved enough to buy a car. I have been taking her car shopping everyday. Even though she would rather be taking a nap. I am dragging her into this buying a car and driving yourself around thing. I feel guilty, like she will get hurt in an accident and it will be all my fault because she never wanted to drive in the first place. But, not really, she is an adult and needs to start driving herself around. And she really needs to not get in any accidents ever!

The first car she fell in love with was a Silver VW Bug with a stick. She had to have that car, and she promised to learn to drive a stick. I could just see another two and a half years of trying to teach her to drive a stick, meanwhile me spending all day everyday driving her around. I took her to more car places. I would spend the entire day looking for cars for her and then taking her to show them to her. I know I am a terrible mother and should be making her do all this on her own. But, I am tired of the driving her around and the dragging her feet on getting a license and driving and I deal with frustration best by either yelling or working hard.

Yesterday I found another VW bug that was also silver, had less miles and was an automatic. So I took her to see the car. On the way there I told her this car did not have a cd player, she told me to just turn around and go home, there was no way she was buying a car without a cd player. She would just learn to drive a stick. yeah right. I almost pulled over and beat her on the side of the road. So we went to look at the Bug and the dealer said it wasn't there, that one of his guys uses it to run errands and wont be back with it until later. That they love the car and we will love it too. We left our name and number and by the way he never called us. Anyways, I said do you have any other cars in our price range as long as we are here and he said that he specializes in our price range and every car on the lot would be in our price range. I think I heard angels singing.

So I drug Amanda around the lot. And that is when she fell in love with a little red Mustang Coupe, automatic with leather interior. I thought we should take it for a test drive, she said no she wants to do that with her dad. She feels like we are leaving him out of the process and that he should be the one to test drive it with her, take it to the mechanic and negotiate the price. I was seriously trying not to strangle her, but ok dad can do the rest. I asked how late they are open and the guy told me 6 or 6:30pm. What is that? Don't people usually have an actual time they close? OK so we are in Mississippi, things are more leisurely and not ridged with like opening and closing times or having the cars you are trying to sell on the lot.

Jeff meanwhile was trying to pass a gun shooting test. He was out in the firing range and unreachable. I knew that he wouldn't be done until 6pm. I left him messages on his work phone, which I didn't know if he would check before coming home and his cell phone, which I imagined was turned off and he would miss his missed calls and text messages. So Mandy and I drove home.

Jeff called me before leaving work, he passed his gun shooting test. Which by the way gives me enormous knots in my stomach the thought that he has to be able to shoot and clean and load all kinds of big guns as part of his training to be deployed. Not to mention the anthrax and small pox vaccinations and later this month he has to go live in the woods for a week for survival training. This all upsets me. It is only a week or two until he goes off to survival training and then a week or so after that he leaves for the senior NCO academy for six weeks and then it is the big deployment for six months. I seriously cannot write the stuff on the calendar because it upsets me too much. Like if I don't write it down or actually know the dates it wont really happen. So he calls me and I ask him to meet us at the dealer on his way home from work. It is less than a 1/2 mile from his work.

Jeff feels that isn't a good idea and we should WAIT until Friday when he is off from work for him and Mandy to go and test drive one or both of these cars etc. I try to explain to Jeff, why I am determined to get this done. He thinks that he wouldn't be able to get the car inspected at 6 in the evening. He asks me if I know how late the mechanic is open. He doesn't want to have to go there and then go back again later. Just wants to get it all done at once. Mandy agrees with her dad. There is a lot of back and forth, like ok I will go - no you don't have to if you don't want to - no I'll go - whatever you think is best. And it ended up that he didn't go. But, he called me back to tell me that he appreciates how hard I have been working and he and Mandy will get a car on Friday, I don't have to worry about it anymore. Except, I am still missing out on a bunch of stuff I wanted to do today because I am spending the day driving Mandy around and then I have to go with Jeff to an award or induction ceremony tonight so I need to somehow manage to get my work done, dinner, homework, etc all by 6pm. We could have had a car last night.

Meanwhile, Lily is having a nervous breakdown. She was speaking to me while I was talking on the phone trying to convince Jeff to drive .5 miles after work and look at a damn car and Lily lost it. She spent the next two hours screaming at the top of her lungs. She has been reverting to her fit throwing self since school started. Change is hard on the girl. Plus, I think she needs a tad more sleep. I had promised a neighbor that Lily could come out and play but I had to call and cancel, her little boy was disappointed, I felt bad. I told Lily she had to stay in her room until she stopped crying. That took awhile. My nerves were shot. She finally cried herself to sleep and slept for about an hour and a half before I woke her up. Then she ate dinner, did homework, took a bath and went back to bed. All without crying. Boy was she mad at me. This morning she was very sweet too.

Basically yesterday as I sat at the dinner table looking around at my sweet family I was thinking about how all three of them needed to be smacked. And then as I stayed up until after midnight doing my job, while my dear family all slumbered peacefully. No doubt thinking of ways to spend the money I am was earning.

I feel like I have dug myself into a hole and can't find the way out. So how are you all doing? I apologize for not editing this post, I have to leave to drive Mandy to school now.