Life is a Highway... Literally

I used to really love driving. That’s right – used to. I think my love affair with the road began after I passed my drivers test on attempt numero dos (no thanks to you, rogue purple minivan – who buys a purple van, anyway? A road test sabotaging jerk, that’s who) and sadly, ended a few months ago. What caused such a rift? Was it the strains of a long distance relationship? Or was everything moving too fast? On the contrary, I submit that it was moving too slowly, and that this has killed my love of driving. The following narration depicts a typical drive for me.

Garage
7:00 am
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I’m awake and it’s time to leave for work. I insert a CD, the contents of which directly reflect my mood, which in the morning could be generously described as ‘miffed at the world.’ After navigating the gauntlet of garden paraphernalia that is my driveway, I’m on my way.

Back roads
7:04 am
Hmm, not much traffic on these roads. I feel powerful, with no slow cars reigning me in. What’s this joy I feel? Could I be… in love with the road again? Or is it the llamas on Florida Road? They are some cute llamas.

Intersection of Death St. and Poor Visibility Ave.
7:08 am
A blind left turn onto a 50 mph road: the first indication of what kind of a drive it’s going to be. Best case scenario: a school bus on the right stops all traffic, while wood nymphs and dancing squirrels lead me in an unrushed left turn. The peasants rejoice. Worst case scenario: Indy 500 tryouts rejected for excessive speed scream over the hill in a rainstorm; when I make a break for it, I inadvertently hit a school bus filled with puppies and children. Explosions, mayhem and a sense of ‘preventable death’ permeate the scene. Usually I shoot for somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. The other problem is that I have to execute this turn from a hill. I’m sure this doesn’t sound problematic to those of you with automatic transmissions. But I drive a stick shift. Now, I drive better than when I took a test drive and killed it five times in front of oncoming traffic. But that's a story for another time. I have improved a great deal, but hills are still a sticking point. So to speak. I can start on a hill, but another car idling in my exhaust pipe makes this harder than it needs to be. This morning, no one was behind me. Perhaps today will be different…

On-ramp to I-69 S
7:10 am
Today is no different. An eighteen-wheeler claims the right lane as his own, refusing to acknowledge the on-ramp peons. Thanks, buddy. Soon, though, I’m actually going the speed limit. I am hopeful for the future, but resigned to reality. Surely this won’t last.

I-69 S
7:15 am
And it didn’t last. I’m now going 4 mph. Time for a new CD- suddenly whatever I’m listening to is too cheery. It’s pissing me off. At this rate, I should get to work a little bit after lunch.

I-69 S
7:17 am
Completely stopped now. I can’t understand why; there are three lanes. Unless someone has built a cement wall across them, I see no reason for our complete lack of ‘go.’ Becoming increasingly irate. I glare at the tinted windows of my fellow commuters. I need to blame someone- I choose to blame them. Why don’t we GO?!? I put the car into reverse, as that is the inevitable next step.

Exit 0
7:29 am
Finally, my exit. The word ‘exit’ seems to imply a release, an exchange for something new. In this case, it means a lateral movement within the same circle of hell, or perhaps a move to a lower level if road construction is involved. But I bet that wouldn’t fit on the exit sign. That’s all right. Call me psychic, but the bright orange signs are giving me a clear indication of what lies ahead. Keep those belts on, kids. We’re halfway there.

I-465 W
7:36 am
Why do I always get stuck behind the hot-dogging semi driver who can “totally handle three trailers, no problem”? And why do all these trucks have modified mufflers that expel exhaust not as fumes but as 90 mph exhaust bullets that glance off of my windshield like, well, actual bullets off of Superman? And why does all of my music SUCK? CDs, you’re being shelved. You’re up, radio. Thank God for soothing, soothing scan. This is my first scan-enabled radio after years of coveting others’. Mmm, scan. There’s always something better on the radio.

I-465 W
7:40 am
Except for today, evidently. Because we’re stopping on static. STATIC. What’s so special about this static that I had to listen to it, scan? Did ya think I’d like it? You skipped all the other static, why’d you stop here? This is so NOT a station, it’s not even funny. I hate you, scan. Although, come to think of it, static might be preferable to, say, Radio Disney. The entire musical repertoire of that station consists of Hillary Duff’s album, the Baha Men’s seemingly eternal curiosity about dog liberation and the musical migraine that is the Hamster Dance. Yeesh – static’s sounding better and better.

I-465: Construction Ground Zero
7:46 am
These ‘reduced speed 35 mph’ signs are mocking me. I haven’t broken 15 mph for twenty minutes now. Shut up, sign. I think it speaks to my irritable state of mind when I say ‘shut up’ to things that a) are inanimate, b) cannot hear me and c) were not making noise to begin with.

I-465 S
7:47 am
Stopped again, for what seems like no reason other than the drivers ahead of me slowing down to gawk at the big yellow construction vehicles. Look – I’ll pony up and buy you your very own Bob the Builder video if you promise to watch it at home during rush hour. Then you can see the bulldozers all you want, and I won’t have to invent new curse words or hurt my throat yelling about how you should be rolled up in a carpet and thrown off of a bridge. Deal?

I-465 S
7:50 am
The last ten minutes of this drive actually go the fastest – even with the copious and erratic stop lights. Or the car seat (sans baby, thankfully) in the middle of the road. How on earth does that happen? I mean, I can think of a few scenarios. Most include Social Services and some jail time, or at the very least a very addle-brained consumer, returning home from a quick jaunt to Starbucks and her local car seat store becoming confused upon finding a mocha latte securely buckled in the back seat.

Parking lot
8:ish
After a drive like that, anything they throw at me during the workday would be fine, you’re thinking. You, who have obviously never been on the business end of an automated pipetter for eight hours. Your naïveté makes me smile wistfully, thinking of my own pre-pipette innocence.

It’s been said that we find value in the journey and not in the destination. However, I’d have to argue that this case ends in a draw, with both the journey and the destination awarded a big ol’ bucket chock-full of awful. I like to find my value laying by the pool, sipping multicolored beverages adorned with equally multicolored paper umbrellas. As for me and the road… our future remains uncertain. Maybe we’ll talk if I can ever get Tom Cochrane’s ‘Life is a Highway’ out of my head.

Words I Don't Like

1. Slice
2. Ginormous
3. Scab
4. Y'all
5. Titer
6. Goodly
7. Ornery
8. Tattie
9. Nuzzle
10. Sump

Always the Variably-Named Wedding Participant, Never the Bride

The last time I attended a wedding was just this side of the memory void that is my life before age three. I was a flower girl and I performed admirably, for those of you thinking about including me in your wedding party. Of course, the main point of the flower girl is to be cute. While it’s hard not to be cute when you’re four years old and wearing a hoop skirt, I like to think that I had that extra little sparkle that clinched the position. The fact that I’m four years older than my cousins, and thus probably the only one who was capable of walking of her own volition and/or surviving outside of a uterus hadn’t occurred to me until a few minutes ago. Huh. Nevertheless, I was dang cute. Yet after this charming (I’m told) performance, I was to embark upon a seventeen-year wedding dry-spell that would only end this summer. Speaking of which, I’d like to congratulate two people in particular. We’ll call them Theresa and Jonathan, because those are their names. Congratulations on your upcoming wedding and I hope you don’t mind if I write about it!

But let’s get back to business. It is my intention to debunk the wedding, beginning with the few preliminary events of someone else’s that I’ve attended. Probably not so much ‘debunk’ as ‘comment snarkily on them for a thousand words or so.’

I was asked to be a reader at the upcoming ceremony, most likely because of my mah-velous speaking voice. Ahem. But I’ll be reading someone else’s work. Uh, God’s. Cuz it’s the Bible and all. I suppose I could add my own flair to it. Say, an interpretive mime act, or a complicated shadow puppet show. Whee! Just kidding, guys. I’ll be good and learn all the big words beforehand. I didn’t buy Hooked on Phonics for nothin’! Just as long as you’re sure you don’t want it in Pig Latin. Okay! Inefay. Ebay atthay ayway.

Just last weekend I attended the bridal shower. From my tv- and movie-gleaned knowledge of such things, it was basically a G-rated bachelorette party, what with the extended family and impressionable young minds present. It got off to a good start as I walked through the door and was immediately proclaimed the ‘guest who traveled the furthest to attend’ prize winner. How great is that? I could be enticed to go lots of places with a song in my heart if I were presented with a spurious award as soon as I set foot in the door. The dentist and work spring to mind. I exchanged the gift I had brought for a drink and a seat on the couch in front of assorted snack foods. This party just kept getting better and better!

Pleasantly idle chitchat was followed by party games. I LOVE party games. With a judicious word addition and a quick case change, we learn that more specifically, I love WINNING party games. The first game, if I may be so bold as to whimsically title it using a serious learning disability and a copyright-protected name, was Dyslexic Scattergories. The couple’s names were written vertically on a piece of paper, and each guest was charged with coming up with a word for each letter that related to love and marriage. Hmm. The family friendly restriction and my burning desire to be perceived as funny made this an appealing challenge. Unfortunately, as soon as the phrase ‘love and marriage’ was uttered, the theme from ‘Married with Children’ began flouncing through my head, thoroughly disrupting any free-association creativity I once had. So aside from a few laughs at my more ‘racy’ answers (seriously… I may as well have used graphic anatomical terms for all the shocked laughs I got when I read ‘hanky-panky’) no awards would be forthcoming from my participation in Dyslexic Scattergories.

Next came a round of brandy slushes, which I suspect were served to give the under-twenty-one crowd an edge in the next game. Or maybe not. Either way, who cares? They were really good.

On to gift bingo, my son! Er- daughter, rather, seeing as all the men folk were banished upstairs to watch baseball and smoke cigars or equally manly activities. And now that I’ve shot the opening of this paragraph al to hell, lets talk about gift bingo. We received blank bingo cards and were told to fill in each square with a gift we thought she’d get, to be crossed out if it were opened. And so it became a race to remember what had been checked off of the gift registry I had looked at when I went shopping. Or, to find out what the people on either side of me had bought and, utilizing the free space, been one spot away from a guaranteed bingo. I can see your point how that might’ve been construed as cheating. And I don’t cheat at bridal shower games! At least not well enough to win more than second place, apparently. Guaranteed bingo… yeah right. My plot had not accounted for gift order. Perhaps next time a carefully drawn gift pile schematic would be in order, and my victory would be assured… Or I could begin my mental chant of ‘It’s just a game. It’s just a game,' like my psychiatrist suggested.

During the present opening, I noticed an almost rabid insistence that the ribbons on each gift remain intact. “Don’t break the ribbons!” they cried vehemently, as I sat on the couch wondering silently, “Why? What’s up with the ribbons?” As it turns out, what was up with the ribbons was an age-old tradition, according to resident wedding expert Kathy. By resident, I mean sitting next to me. And by expert I mean knows more about weddings than me, which could be anything more than the alternate lyrics à la second grade to the wedding march. Anyway, supposedly for every ribbon you break, that’s a baby you’ll have. Much like the ‘for every candle you don’t blow out, that’s how many boyfriends you have!’ thing we used to do at birthday parties. Or was that just my friends and me? Except since we’ve matured, the threat of cooties has been replaced with painful childbirth. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

After the party, all the ribbon is saved as used as a bouquet during the rehearsal dinner. Who knew? I’d never heard of this before, which kinda makes me wonder what other traditions I haven’t heard of. And also what’s stopping me from just making up some of my own. They gotta start somewhere, am I right? “Wait – if you break the ribbon on someone’s gift, you gotta give that person fifty bucks.” Or, “The ‘traveled furthest award’ is a day at the spa to relieve any road-rage tension. Come on. That one dates back to the 14th century. You wanna break tradition?”

So that’s what I’ve learned about the wedding process thus far. Maybe this will be but part one of this wedding exposition, seeing as I haven’t actually given any insight on or even been to one yet. Next time, we’ll delve into the mysteries of ‘something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.’ Speaking of what to wear, maybe I should get shopping. I’m pretty sure I’ve outgrown that hoopskirt.

Words I Like

1. piratical
2. snarky
3. sozzled
4. histrionic
5. maniacal
6. feckless
7. muzzle
8. ply
9. aphesia
10. asinine