Maybe you can drive my car ...

I got my driver’s license in November of 1999. I got my permit before that, in May. And my father taught me to drive, in the old blue Toyota in the elementary school parking lot, just like he did with my sister and my brothers before me. And I learned to drive. In Page, Arizona, where there are maybe five intersections with stoplights. The speed limit is 25mph on the main roads around town, unless you head off the mesa, where you can speed up to 45.

Then I moved to the Valley in September of 2002 and suddenly I was driving on 6-lane roads where the speed limit was 45 but everyone was driving 60, and I realized that I didn’t know how to drive at all. Well, I’ve learned. And I’ve learned a number of other things as well – most drivers in Maricopa County are morons. Period. How do I know this? Let me count the ways.

Here’s one. Each upper corner of an Arizona license plate is supposed to bear one – ONE – sticker. A month sticker in the left corner and a year sticker in the right. When you get your new year sticker in the mail, the accompanying instructions clearly state that you are to cover the old year sticker with the new. Yet every day I’m on the road I see at least four drivers who feel it’s very important for the world to know that their plates were paid up for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 in addition to 2009. The stickers will be in a neat little row on the license plate, sometimes overlapping, sometimes edging the plate. Although I suppose I should be glad that those people bothered to renew. I see an alarming number of cars driving around with plates that expired in 2005 and 2006.

Not that the cops are going to pull them over for it. In fact, I’m not sure what you have to do to get pulled over around here. Running a red light doesn’t seem to do it. The prevailing thought here is, it’s not red if you go fast enough. So the light will change and six or seven cars will go on through the intersection, even ones that were stopped behind the crosswalk when the light changed. This, by the way, is how people get killed. But quite often it’s eight cars that go through, and the eighth is a black-and-white driven by one of Gilbert’s finest.

You won’t get pulled over for speeding, either. I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon: no matter how fast I drive, someone always has to go faster than me. I’ve tried flooring it and still, some intrepid little Jeep or Acura is always speeding by me in the next lane. I got up to 65 in a 45 zone once before I gave up and let the impatient H2 driver fly past me. I tried the same thing on the freeway and realized I was going 85 in a 65 zone and I was still being tailgated by a semi truck.

Speaking of the freeways, if you’re on the 101, you might as well go 101mph, because most people can’t tell the difference between the highway number and the speed limit. I think this is why ADOT was so reluctant to finish the 202. I-10 looks a lot like 110, doesn’t it? You might as well accelerate when you go from the 101 to the 10; always assuming of course that traffic is actually moving. Quite frequently the average speed is … well, 10, if one is lucky.

Other offenses that will NOT get you pulled over include illegal U-turns, failing to signal one’s intent to turn (one would think that cars sold in Arizona don’t come equipped with turning signals), jacking your pickup truck up about three extra feet, tailgating a car so closely that the bugs on your grill scrape off on their bumper, driving around at night with no headlights, covering up your license plate, not having a license plate, not stopping at a stop sign, text-messaging while driving, making a bad pass, and in most cases, driving drunk.

The only thing I’ve seen people stopped for, actually, is driving in the HOV lane illegally. That’s Arizona for you. You can endanger the lives of everyone on the road if you want, but we’ll be *damned* if you’re going to drive in the HOV lane without a passenger in your car. That’s a smiting offense.

I’ve often thought that the majority of Arizona drivers ought to have their licenses revoked. But it occurred to me a while ago that I’m just assuming all these drivers are actually licensed, which is foolish of me. You don’t have to have a license to get behind the wheel of a car, do you? The only time you need one is if you’re pulled over, and I think we’ve established that that almost never happens. You can buy a car without a license, can’t you? There’s nothing to stop you from driving it off the lot without one, either. And therein lies the problem. Well, one of them, anyway.

I wish there was some way to get all of these lunatics off the road. But I’m at a loss. So in the meantime, I’ve become one of them. I shout at people who can’t hear me, I cut people off, I speed, and I change lanes with the speed and precision of a Frogger (although I do at least use my signal). I have become as bad as everyone else. With one notable exception: my driving record is unblemished. I’ve never even been pulled over.

I thought for sure I was going to be, once. I was looking for an address and I accidentally ran a yellow that changed to red. A cop followed me through. I thought I was done for, but instead of turning his lights on, he tailed me impatiently for 30 yards, then sped around me, going 55 in a 40 zone. Then he made a right turn on another red without stopping or signaling, and pulled into the parking lot of a Dunkin’ Donuts. No joke.

I love the valley.

Honk if you love peace and quiet

I want to be very clear about something here: I don't want to complain about my little car. I love my little car. I have a great little car. Compared to my first car, it's an Aston Martin.

Of course, my first car was a 1976 Toyota Corolla SR5 Liftback and I learned to drive it in 1999, when the ceiling liner no longer stuck to the inside roof of the car, and you had to open the car door to raise or lower the windows, and the keys fell out if you made too sharp a turn, and you could start it with a flat head screw driver, and the gas gauge was broken and you had to ask the a/c very nicely to blow air at all and good luck getting that air to be cold. I actually loved that little blue car and I was brokenhearted when my dad said 'enough' and donated it to the high school auto shop.

The car I drive now is a 1997 Chevy Cavalier - the cheapest model they made that year, under 10 grand brand new if I'm not mistaken. My father bought it used from a man he worked with at the power plant (who had bought it for his stepdaughter's 16th birthday; unfortunately he overestimated her intelligence, I don't think she could drive a stick shift). The steering is power, but the locks and windows aren't. Nothing fancy. It has a nice stereo but that was a birthday present last year, certainly not standard. In the seven or so years since my father bought the Cavvy, we have had to buy 2 new batteries, replace the a/c and the belt driver, buy new windshield wipers about a dozen times, reset the EGR valve, get all-new breaks, replace all of the knobs on the dash, and fix the clutch. There have been a few electrical problems as well, some wiring crap I can't recall. And I still love my little champagne-colored USA-made disaster.

Until lately.

Two weeks ago I was sitting at my computer, looking at Otters on Cute Overload, when I heard a car horn honk. And honk, and honk. For about five straight minutes. I already had a migraine, and this wasn't helping. The doorbell rang a moment later; it was a neighbor. The offending horn was in my Cavalier. It stopped while she was at the door. And there have been five or six other such incidents of late. Constant beeping. My mom's been able to stop the noise by banging on the hood. I've had to unlock the car and hit the horn to make it stop.

This was a particularly embarrassing problem last week when I was stopped on a freeway overpass at a red light, behind a minivan. My car honked for about 15 seconds by itself. I threw my hands up in the air, hoping that surrounding drivers would see that I wasn't trying to be a jerk. I was just driving a jerk car.

So I've gone on-line to try to figure out if my car is haunted or what else. I've examined pictures and diagrams in the Haynes car repair book my father bought years ago. I think I can unplug my horn and make the problem go away.

The only thing is, what if I NEED to honk at someone and I can't? I guess I'm going to have to find a mechanic. I've never gone to a mechanic before. My father could fix anything car-related. Anything, period.

I've had moments where I thought my father was honking the horn. And if he is I'm okay with that. As long as he knocks it off while the neighbors are home. They get crabby when they're honked at for 10 minutes.

Well, color me incredulous

I've been watching a lot of TV lately.
In my defense, I'm unemployed, and at least, oh, 10% of what I watch is educational. Fault me if you want for considering "Showbiz Tonight" educational, but it IS on the Headline News channel, and I've learned a number of things from watching. But I digress.
More TV means more commercials, of course, and even though I mute the television I usually end up watching them. As I've watched them, something has been bothering me, and since it's bothering me, I'm going to make for darned sure that it bothers the rest of you as well.

I've seen a number of television commercials for haircolor - L'Oreal is the one that comes to mind. They'll show a celebrity - Heather Locklear, for instance, or Andie MacDowell, sitting at home with Excellence Creme on their heads, lounging around while their color processes, talking about what a great product it is, blah blah blah. What I want to know is, are we honestly expected to believe that these women color their own hair at home? Heather Locklear for one strikes me as the sort who pays a couple hundred clams for a simple haircut. I don't think she's going to spend eight bucks at Wal-Mart on haircolor and do it herself in the bathroom at home. I just don't buy it.
I've been to beauty school. I know entirely more about the chemistry of haircolor than I ever wanted to. I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that there is a difference between the color you buy in a box at Wal-Mart and the color that licenced professionals use at hair salons. They're made of different chemicals and they work on the hair shaft differently. If a person uses box hair color month after month, it builds up. The hair isn't going to look completely pretty. Salon color doesn't do quite the same thing. That's not just something that hairdressers say to get more money out of you, it's basic chemistry.
I don't mention this to wow the general populace with my knowledge of color chemistry. I mention this because if Andie MacDowell was really coloring her own hair with Excellence Creme every month, it would look more greasy than lustrous and the color would be one-dimensional and uneven. Either she's got a head of hair unique among humans, or somebody's lying.
Guess which one I'm going with?

Good news!

Fantastic news. Oh, snap. This is just fantastic. Brilliant. I can hardly contain myself.

I think my financial problems are over.

I don't want to jinx it or anything. Nothing's definite yet. The money's not in my pocket. But from the information I have so far, things look good. As I understand it, I stand to take in somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000. I think. It might only be half that at first. But either way, I'm not going to have to worry about money again for a while. I can pay off my student loans and my credit cards and buy a new EGR valve for my car... hell, I can buy a new car! I'll be rich!

At first I was mad at the guy in front of me on the freeway offramp. He could have made it through the yellow; in fact, he seemed to have stopped on a green light. But I owe my financial upswing to him. If he hadn't stopped, I wouldn't have stopped behind him. And if I hadn't stopped behind him, I wouldn't have seen the sign in the gravel right next to the offramp:

"Get rich buying and selling real estate! Make $250,000-$500,000 this year! Call 480-XXX-XXXX!"

I haven't called yet, of course, but I'm sure that if I do I'm well on my way to financial prosperity.

Yeah. And if you believe that, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.
In fact, that's the first sale I'm going to make on my way to real estate millions.

irrational phobias for dummies - aaahh!! dummies!!!

This originally went up on my MySpace blog on July 4th but I think it fits the criteria for this blog, too, which means that it is neurotic, rambling, and vaguely amusing, and that I don't think it's particularly depressing or offensive.


Well now, aren't I just the gift that keeps on giving? Another blog! Just as inane and meandering as the last one - and that's a promise.

I've been watching a marathon of "The Twilight Zone" on the Sci-Fi Channel. I forgot until a few hours ago that they show a few dozen episodes on New Year's Eve and day and July 4th, give or take a few hours. I always manage to miss my favorite episodes (although at the moment I couldn't tell you which ones those are).
I do remember that last New Year's I ended up watching the one where Marsha couldn't leave the department store and it turns out she was a mannequin - you know, the episode that irrevocably scarred me for life and caused a deep-seated, unhealthy and completely irrational fear of mannequins, dummies, and by some odd extension, wigs. I knew I should have turned it off as soon as it came on but I couldn't do it - I couldn't stop watching. And I have to tell you, that's the scariest fecking thing I've ever seen. Forget any of the Saw movies; anything with zombies or mass murderers or contagious flesh-eating diseases or body-snatchers. Mannequins scare the hell out of me. I avoid them in department stores and I won't turn my back to them . . . Aw, hell. I can feel a panic attack coming on just thinking about it. Damned soul-sucking plastic minions of the devil...
Where was I?
Right. "The Twilight Zone."
Seems like I always end up watching the episodes I don't like. Or I should say, the ones I don't like as much. Burgess Meredith was in an awful lot of episodes, wasn't he? And something about him just grates on my nerves. I can't explain it - although I do like the episode where he's a librarian on trial for being obsolete. I don't know why.
It's funny I was thinking about those two episodes. Because they sum my life experience up pretty well. I like books. And I hate things with faces (things meaning inanimate objects, not people or animals or actually most stuffed animals but that's probably because I was never allowed any pets growing up).
I think part of my problem with mannequins also stems from the fact that when I was young and impressionable I watched a TV program called "Today's Special." I'll elaborate for the uninitiated here, which I sincerely hope is everyone, because, damn.
"Today's Special," like so many other crappy, crappy things, was produced in Canada, America's hat. As I recall, the basic premise was that this woman named Jodie worked in a department store at night (I'm not sure why). Jodie hat a magic hat she put on a mannequin named Jeff, who had spectacularly awful hair, and the hat brought him to life. There was also a large, rather creepy puppet named Sam who was something like a security guard. He had a huge mustache and the sleepy eyes and red nose of a career alcoholic. The character I liked was Muffy the mouse. She had the coolest little tiny apartment in a tiny building with a tiny elevator, and all of these little bitty clothes and accessories and even a little bitty motorcycle. I wanted all of her stuff very badly (for one of my favorite toys, a 5-inch tall stuffed cat named Crinklebine). Although in retrospect Muffy was a little creepy looking as well. I don't remember any specific plots but I do remember that even though I knew it was coming it creeped the hell out of me when Jeff came to life.
Aw, hell. Why am I blogging about this before bed? I'm going to have psychotic dreams about the evil plastic people. Plotting malicious deeds under cover of night, locked in their stores, their limbs unnaturally shiny - some missing appendages and bearing metal rods instead of hands, their harsh faces frozen, cold dead eyes fixed on a target in the distance, some with sloppily painted hair molded to their perfectly rounded skulls, others with hastily styled wigs hanging lifelessly from their heads, hard lips locked together, impossibly proportioned torsos straining forward, ready to lean in, to push, to crush, to strangle, to press in, smother, suffocate, violate, kill...
Crimeny. Nick was right - I am action-packed with issues. But you know what? When the mannequins rebel and unite and attempt a takeover, I'll be ready with a sawed-off shotgun and my daddy's Ruger, shooting their plastic noggins off.

Maybe I should see my therapist twice a week.

(old) Lady sings the blues

I’m starting to feel old.

I know it’s a little ridiculous because I’m twenty-four. I’m certainly not in any rush to feel older. And it’s not that I feel middle-aged by any means. But lately I have noticed several things that I think are good signs that I am not a kid any more.

For instance, a few days ago I began a sentence with, “When I was your age…” Also, “Kids these days…” And only this morning I realized that I have shoes I bought ten years ago. There are other things. I’ve started to pay attention to ads for eye cream. I have actually accomplished several of my life goals. If I work a long day my back hurts, not just my feet. I can’t get quickly and easily up and off the couch and my knees crack when I bend them past a 90-degree angle.

Most of my favorite books, songs and movies came out at least five years ago but I tend to think they’re only a year or two old. I frequently forget how old I am. I save money with no particular goal in mind. I have no interest in any of the clothes located in the “juniors” department. I’m starting to look back fondly on some parts of my childhood. I remember the last time the Dodgers won the pennant (what was it, twenty years ago?). I no longer find Jim Carrey funny.

I know my blood type. I’ve had my gallbladder removed. I have to adjust the part in my hair to hide grays. I find myself reading more of the newspaper than just the comics. My car was purchased – used, mind you – during the Clinton administration. I know exactly what kind of gas mileage it gets. Facial moisturizer is no longer optional. Cashiers no longer call me “Miss,” it’s “Ma’am” now. And most importantly: in two months, I will get a discount on auto insurance because my prefrontal cortex will have finished growing.

And so it is for these reasons, and twenty million other little ones, that I’m starting to feel a little guilty for watching “SpongeBob SquarePants” when I get home from work, and why I was looking at apartments before my dad went into the hospital with another brain tumor. I may not have aged much since I turned 18, but I’m starting to feel my age. Which is … oh, don’t tell me. It’s, um … I used to know this one …

Push It

I was wondering the other day about my therapist. I know that I give him migraines sometimes when I get to talking too fast and do my what-ifs and things like that. So even though I'm paying the man I started to wonder if he ever thinks to himself, "Aw, hell, it's Thursday, Jill's coming in."

Apparently not.

I got an extra half-hour on Thursday. I was about thirty-five minutes into my fifty-minute session and I'd been quite happy because I'd come to some important realizations and I was proud of myself. John commented that the way I was handling something was very mature and he was proud of the progress made. Then he told me something he thought related to me, about how he'd come to realize that seeking the approval of others is sort of expecting them to be a certain way, and it's better not to want people to change like that, yadda yadda yadda. I agreed because the way he was explaining it made sense. Then John had to go and tie it all to something that is a very sore subject with me. He said well wasn't it the same there, and wasn't I expecting this person to be a certain way?

Well, that got me going like nothing else and I sure as hell wasn't going to stop once the subject was broached, so I kept going, and he kept egging me on, pushing the subject, and I was shouting, and he seemed to enjoy my rage. At one point he started to tell me something, and I said, "hey, look, we've been at this for three years, and I know exactly what you're going to say. That I have stories I'm telling myself that aren't true, and that I need to let them go, and that I can't change anyone but myself and I shouldn't waste time seeking anyone else's approval." And I went on for another minute, telling him every little trite homily he's ever pushed on me.

He just laughed. "Pretty much," he said. And then he went back to pushing my buttons, trying to get me to see reason even though I'm much happier turning a blind eye to reason or better yet pretending reason isn't reason at all.

"It's not about you, Jill," he insisted.

"Hey, I'm paying you two bucks a minute," I said. "Work with me here."

He refused and said he wasn't going to let me pretend it was about me no matter how much I was paying him. So he tried a different angle with a different point. Finally, 25 minutes after I should have been out of there, I came to the conclusion John wanted me to come to.

"Yes! Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! That's what I've been trying to get you to see."

"Well next time maybe you could save me a little time and tell me what you want me to see from the get-go," I said.

"That wouldn't help you."

"At least point me in the right fecking direction next time."

As we were leaving his office he said to me, "I love these sessions. I have so much fun pushing your buttons."

"So is that what you do when you've had a boring day? Push my buttons for your own amusement?"

He laughed.

But he didn't say no.