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hippybngstockngTime spent away from home is time I wish I was home these days. I guess that's what not truly having a home of your own will do to you after enough time. I have been wanting to go visit my father and my siblings and step-mother in CT for a while, but the motivation is low in addition to the financial situation.
However I finally did manage to pry myself from the house and get to my mother's place to help her out.
I drove down during the snow storm on Wednesday in PA that caused the 50 car pile up and whatnot (though that was on Rt 80, not 90 where I was) and I passed a number of 18 wheelers that had ended up in the embankment or jack-knifed in the median, and a number of motorists who had flown off into the woods (mostly SUV's HAHA). I was cautious as usual and managed to keep the near death experiences to 3. 2 wind related, and only one related to another motorist. Dude decides to change lanes for no discernible reason as I am approaching, there is no one if front of either of us, but suddenly he decides to be in front of me as I am about to pass one of those perilous 18 wheelers. I had to tap the brakes as a result and nearly lost it, but recovered. It was windy so I didn't become upset since I realized it might not have been intentional.
The ride home was another story entirely. Suffice it to say I feel the need to take a week off from being on the road.
The highlights of it are that I think Sunday must have been deemed "Rude Day" at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I have never seen so many drivers openly trying to screw with one another in one day. Not all of them with me, fortunately, but the one time it did happen... Well I'll just paint the picture for you, since it's one of those things I think we can all agree is a commonality of rude driving- REVENGE...
I'm in Ontario, having just gotten around Hamilton or something, and it's snowing. I am in the left hand lane in a line of cars 3 deep. We are passing another line of cars that is pretty long. The guy in front is going notably slowly. The guy behind him is riding the first guys butt. I am the third car of course, back at a safe but still close distance. We stay this way for a while, and I can tell car #2 is getting impatient from the way he is driving, and indeed at one point he lays down on his horn for probably 10 whole seconds. I am thinking, "Wow, this guy has a rage problem." So I increase my following distance. Finally guy #2 gets his opening and passes slow guy #1 on the right and seems to be free and clear, so I creep up behind slow guy #1 to see whether he's just going to get out of the way. At the same time, guy #2 decides to teach guy #1 a lesson and gets in front of him despite this being CLEARLY UNNECESSARY and then slams on his brakes causing #1 to nearly rear end him, and myself to nearly rear end #1! #1 and I both start honking.
At this point I become enraged, so I pass them on the right and get along Mr Revengy Pants and despite the fact that K is fast asleep in the back seat I actually roll down my window and bellow out to the guy, "THAT WAS NOT SAFE!" but he doesn't hear me, so I give him a solid glare and give him the finger. Then I calmly rolled up my window, gunned my V-6 and left the two of them behind to work it out on their own.
In cases like that I will achieve great speeds to avoid people I feel are actively unsafe on the road and I will feel justified any time a cop tries to tell me otherwise... Revenge very occasionally has its place in the world, but in my mind, the highway is sooooo not one of them. That is truly the way those 50 car pile ups get started.
I was REALLY lucky that the snow wasn't so bad that the car fish tailed like it usually does. Loaded down the way I was I would have been lucky to not die.
There were three more, equally scary but not revenge oriented instances of rudeness that also almost caused me damage personally, and I witnessed no fewer than 10 others. It's times like those that get me to wondering why people can be one way in speech and totally another in practice, like while driving.
The visit with my mother was fine for the most part. It was actually K that got on my nerves more than my mother at a couple points. He really enjoyed being there, but seemed to be going out of his way to do things he knows he gets in trouble for, and then finding it very funny when I got mad. My mother was pretty well behaved for the most part, only a couple moments where I wanted to either hit her with the clue stick or just tell her to bite me. I had to tell her to stop riding me about a couple things she has a tendency to go on about, but she was reasonably receptive to the shut down so it was pretty much all good. It was just a tremendous drag to not be at home. Even though I don't have pictures up, and there's still a lot of crap around it's still good to be in my own space again. I occasionally feel tense about the landlord being there, but I think it's just residual self-consciousness from living with my mom. She had a way of making me perpetually tense about having to share space. I think it was the constant nagging about little things and her obvious inability to believe me when I would say "I will get to it! It's on my list!" My landlord on the other hand has been really understanding of our messes, and even of the time we accidentally flooded the almost the whole basement, including his apartment of course. We've been appropriately apologetic when we are slow about something, and we do always deliver on our word or try to make arrangements otherwise. I've also been trying to demonstrate myself as someone who is looking out for the property as much as they are, it really is a beautiful if tiny old house, and it deserves to be kept well. I am happy to be calling it my home even though sometimes the energy here does feel a bit funky. Sometimes even downright negative, but again sometimes I decide that it's probably all me.
As you may or may not have sensed from the story in the cut (assuming you read the cuts), I drove home with my car. We worked through the numbers again a little more carefully and mom decided she'd rather foot the bill for the repairs and have us import the car until she is actually ready to buy another- cheaper than her extending the debt on her current line of credit for a hasty purchase. She is going to be looking at a couple cars she hadn't been thinking of before that are a little cheaper though, so it could be sooner than spring so I might try to wait out the full time we have left just in case. I just don't want to have to pay to register 2 cars if I don't have to.
She is going to check out the Pontiac Vibe because our family can get a discount because my grandfather worked for GM for the bulk of his life. I've been curious about that one myself. Does anyone have one or know someone who does? It looks to the naked eye to be a sturdy little thing, with okay gas mileage, and cute by my standards, but I am never sure about American cars. They have such a short half-life a lot of the time. I like a car I can buy used when it's already 10 years old and drive it for another 8 years until it looks and sounds like someone used it to plow a field.
Now if I could just get my husband to stop wrecking the cool ones...
However I finally did manage to pry myself from the house and get to my mother's place to help her out.
I drove down during the snow storm on Wednesday in PA that caused the 50 car pile up and whatnot (though that was on Rt 80, not 90 where I was) and I passed a number of 18 wheelers that had ended up in the embankment or jack-knifed in the median, and a number of motorists who had flown off into the woods (mostly SUV's HAHA). I was cautious as usual and managed to keep the near death experiences to 3. 2 wind related, and only one related to another motorist. Dude decides to change lanes for no discernible reason as I am approaching, there is no one if front of either of us, but suddenly he decides to be in front of me as I am about to pass one of those perilous 18 wheelers. I had to tap the brakes as a result and nearly lost it, but recovered. It was windy so I didn't become upset since I realized it might not have been intentional.
The ride home was another story entirely. Suffice it to say I feel the need to take a week off from being on the road.
The highlights of it are that I think Sunday must have been deemed "Rude Day" at some point when I wasn't paying attention. I have never seen so many drivers openly trying to screw with one another in one day. Not all of them with me, fortunately, but the one time it did happen... Well I'll just paint the picture for you, since it's one of those things I think we can all agree is a commonality of rude driving- REVENGE...
I'm in Ontario, having just gotten around Hamilton or something, and it's snowing. I am in the left hand lane in a line of cars 3 deep. We are passing another line of cars that is pretty long. The guy in front is going notably slowly. The guy behind him is riding the first guys butt. I am the third car of course, back at a safe but still close distance. We stay this way for a while, and I can tell car #2 is getting impatient from the way he is driving, and indeed at one point he lays down on his horn for probably 10 whole seconds. I am thinking, "Wow, this guy has a rage problem." So I increase my following distance. Finally guy #2 gets his opening and passes slow guy #1 on the right and seems to be free and clear, so I creep up behind slow guy #1 to see whether he's just going to get out of the way. At the same time, guy #2 decides to teach guy #1 a lesson and gets in front of him despite this being CLEARLY UNNECESSARY and then slams on his brakes causing #1 to nearly rear end him, and myself to nearly rear end #1! #1 and I both start honking.
At this point I become enraged, so I pass them on the right and get along Mr Revengy Pants and despite the fact that K is fast asleep in the back seat I actually roll down my window and bellow out to the guy, "THAT WAS NOT SAFE!" but he doesn't hear me, so I give him a solid glare and give him the finger. Then I calmly rolled up my window, gunned my V-6 and left the two of them behind to work it out on their own.
In cases like that I will achieve great speeds to avoid people I feel are actively unsafe on the road and I will feel justified any time a cop tries to tell me otherwise... Revenge very occasionally has its place in the world, but in my mind, the highway is sooooo not one of them. That is truly the way those 50 car pile ups get started.
I was REALLY lucky that the snow wasn't so bad that the car fish tailed like it usually does. Loaded down the way I was I would have been lucky to not die.
There were three more, equally scary but not revenge oriented instances of rudeness that also almost caused me damage personally, and I witnessed no fewer than 10 others. It's times like those that get me to wondering why people can be one way in speech and totally another in practice, like while driving.
The visit with my mother was fine for the most part. It was actually K that got on my nerves more than my mother at a couple points. He really enjoyed being there, but seemed to be going out of his way to do things he knows he gets in trouble for, and then finding it very funny when I got mad. My mother was pretty well behaved for the most part, only a couple moments where I wanted to either hit her with the clue stick or just tell her to bite me. I had to tell her to stop riding me about a couple things she has a tendency to go on about, but she was reasonably receptive to the shut down so it was pretty much all good. It was just a tremendous drag to not be at home. Even though I don't have pictures up, and there's still a lot of crap around it's still good to be in my own space again. I occasionally feel tense about the landlord being there, but I think it's just residual self-consciousness from living with my mom. She had a way of making me perpetually tense about having to share space. I think it was the constant nagging about little things and her obvious inability to believe me when I would say "I will get to it! It's on my list!" My landlord on the other hand has been really understanding of our messes, and even of the time we accidentally flooded the almost the whole basement, including his apartment of course. We've been appropriately apologetic when we are slow about something, and we do always deliver on our word or try to make arrangements otherwise. I've also been trying to demonstrate myself as someone who is looking out for the property as much as they are, it really is a beautiful if tiny old house, and it deserves to be kept well. I am happy to be calling it my home even though sometimes the energy here does feel a bit funky. Sometimes even downright negative, but again sometimes I decide that it's probably all me.
As you may or may not have sensed from the story in the cut (assuming you read the cuts), I drove home with my car. We worked through the numbers again a little more carefully and mom decided she'd rather foot the bill for the repairs and have us import the car until she is actually ready to buy another- cheaper than her extending the debt on her current line of credit for a hasty purchase. She is going to be looking at a couple cars she hadn't been thinking of before that are a little cheaper though, so it could be sooner than spring so I might try to wait out the full time we have left just in case. I just don't want to have to pay to register 2 cars if I don't have to.
She is going to check out the Pontiac Vibe because our family can get a discount because my grandfather worked for GM for the bulk of his life. I've been curious about that one myself. Does anyone have one or know someone who does? It looks to the naked eye to be a sturdy little thing, with okay gas mileage, and cute by my standards, but I am never sure about American cars. They have such a short half-life a lot of the time. I like a car I can buy used when it's already 10 years old and drive it for another 8 years until it looks and sounds like someone used it to plow a field.
Now if I could just get my husband to stop wrecking the cool ones...
