Mary got her license this past weekend.
I took the afternoon off on Friday to drive her down to Hastings, to the 3rd-party Driver Testing Facility located in that tiny little village (because the one over in the town of Wyoming was shut down a few months back), and she did her Parking Test and her Driving Test. She endured the pressure of parallel parking and the tension of emergency vehicles suddenly appearing and the baffling decision of one driver to push his out-of-gas vehicle right through the middle of a busy intersection. And she passed.
Now all of our children are licensed drivers, and we adults need never run off to the grocery store to fetch a gallon of milk again. Right? That is the true Right and Privilege of the New Driver: to boldly go where everyone has gone before, fetching items of inestimable value from the store at all hours of the day and night, on the whim of those who have been driving for thirty-plus years and have nothing to prove to anyone.
Well ... we'll see. Mary is not one to suffer fools (or foolish requests) gladly, and rightfully demands proper justification for any errand. She is glad to help out when help is really needed, but woe unto those who make frivolous demands upon her precious time! She is really quite discerning when it comes to such things. We pray that she continues to be as discerning in all her activities.
It was a relief to be done with it. Cheryl took her to the Secretary of State first thing Saturday morning to obtain the actual license. They didn't actually give her the official plastic license with the picture on it; instead, they gave her a temporary paper copy which will serve the purpose until the real one arrives in the mail. Things must've gotten very complicated with those licenses nowadays, what with embedded chips and fraud detection and all that. It now takes a couple weeks to produce them! But she's OK with the paper copy for now.
If she only had a car...
Her car -- that is, the car we've traditionally provided to the youngest driver -- has a few issues that need to be resolved prior to her taking possession. The brakes are worn out; one drive axle boot is cracked and needs replacing; there's a slight radiator leak (again); and the body is rusting away faster than I can replace it. We'd be better off finding her another car, but that's not in the finances right now. I'm down two cars and don't have the time to fix them. If Cheryl had her druthers, they'd be sold off for scrap, but I have it in mind to magically put them back together in my Shop of Wonders (like Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and fly them around the world to rescue little children -- no, wait, that's the movie plot -- I mean, to drive them around the countryside in good weather and bad, in snow and sun, rain or shine. Mary likes the red Subaru, but I'm going to have to do some serious body work before it's really road-ready again. And my other green one still needs the engine installed. And the exhaust system replaced. And a new fuel pump. And new brakes. Oh, golly, more money...
Meanwhile, the basement work goes slowly. Cheryl is painting doors. I'm putting up the drop ceiling. And if it weren't for the other things that keep falling apart ...
Saturday night, I took apart the kitchen drain to find out why it was clogged. I had assumed the clog was in the P-trap. Wrong! It was past the P-trap, back into the wall. Beyond the reach of my snake, even. We tried the "natural" chemical treatments: salt, followed by baking soda, followed by vinegar (which bubbles nicely!), but several applications of those were insufficient to push out the offending material. We also tried the Clog Cannon, but it didn't do anything except cause water to spray out of every connector in the sink.
On Sunday, Mary and I stopped by the store on the way home from church and picked up some Industrial Strength Liquid Plumr (I wish they'd learn to spell!) and I took out all the pipes back to the wall drain and poured 3 doses (2 cups per dose) right into it, and then it finally cleared. Finally!
And then I took a long nap, because I've been feeling extremely exhausted for the last couple of days. And achy all over. Like I'm coming down with something.
Probably a case of "I need a summer vacation".
I took the afternoon off on Friday to drive her down to Hastings, to the 3rd-party Driver Testing Facility located in that tiny little village (because the one over in the town of Wyoming was shut down a few months back), and she did her Parking Test and her Driving Test. She endured the pressure of parallel parking and the tension of emergency vehicles suddenly appearing and the baffling decision of one driver to push his out-of-gas vehicle right through the middle of a busy intersection. And she passed.
Now all of our children are licensed drivers, and we adults need never run off to the grocery store to fetch a gallon of milk again. Right? That is the true Right and Privilege of the New Driver: to boldly go where everyone has gone before, fetching items of inestimable value from the store at all hours of the day and night, on the whim of those who have been driving for thirty-plus years and have nothing to prove to anyone.
Well ... we'll see. Mary is not one to suffer fools (or foolish requests) gladly, and rightfully demands proper justification for any errand. She is glad to help out when help is really needed, but woe unto those who make frivolous demands upon her precious time! She is really quite discerning when it comes to such things. We pray that she continues to be as discerning in all her activities.
It was a relief to be done with it. Cheryl took her to the Secretary of State first thing Saturday morning to obtain the actual license. They didn't actually give her the official plastic license with the picture on it; instead, they gave her a temporary paper copy which will serve the purpose until the real one arrives in the mail. Things must've gotten very complicated with those licenses nowadays, what with embedded chips and fraud detection and all that. It now takes a couple weeks to produce them! But she's OK with the paper copy for now.
If she only had a car...
Her car -- that is, the car we've traditionally provided to the youngest driver -- has a few issues that need to be resolved prior to her taking possession. The brakes are worn out; one drive axle boot is cracked and needs replacing; there's a slight radiator leak (again); and the body is rusting away faster than I can replace it. We'd be better off finding her another car, but that's not in the finances right now. I'm down two cars and don't have the time to fix them. If Cheryl had her druthers, they'd be sold off for scrap, but I have it in mind to magically put them back together in my Shop of Wonders (like Caractacus Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) and fly them around the world to rescue little children -- no, wait, that's the movie plot -- I mean, to drive them around the countryside in good weather and bad, in snow and sun, rain or shine. Mary likes the red Subaru, but I'm going to have to do some serious body work before it's really road-ready again. And my other green one still needs the engine installed. And the exhaust system replaced. And a new fuel pump. And new brakes. Oh, golly, more money...
Meanwhile, the basement work goes slowly. Cheryl is painting doors. I'm putting up the drop ceiling. And if it weren't for the other things that keep falling apart ...
Saturday night, I took apart the kitchen drain to find out why it was clogged. I had assumed the clog was in the P-trap. Wrong! It was past the P-trap, back into the wall. Beyond the reach of my snake, even. We tried the "natural" chemical treatments: salt, followed by baking soda, followed by vinegar (which bubbles nicely!), but several applications of those were insufficient to push out the offending material. We also tried the Clog Cannon, but it didn't do anything except cause water to spray out of every connector in the sink.
On Sunday, Mary and I stopped by the store on the way home from church and picked up some Industrial Strength Liquid Plumr (I wish they'd learn to spell!) and I took out all the pipes back to the wall drain and poured 3 doses (2 cups per dose) right into it, and then it finally cleared. Finally!
And then I took a long nap, because I've been feeling extremely exhausted for the last couple of days. And achy all over. Like I'm coming down with something.
Probably a case of "I need a summer vacation".
1 comment:
Contrats to Mary on becoming an officially recognized licensed driver! And good luck with the car thing. Do you have a drain snake? They're handy little devices. I've used ours a couple of times for a nasty clog that neither Crystal Dra(i)no, nor Liquid PLUM(BE)R could handle.
It's nice having young drivers in the family. When Rebekah first got her license, she didn't care what the errand or excuse was, she would always volunteer to drive. Now, not so much. The older she gets, the less she wants to drive. Good on Mary to be selective now, so as not to take the excitement out of the adventure.
Post a Comment