Y'know, I love many things about where I live now (most of them involve access to fresh and/or central European style food...) and I even love how I have this driveway which would let a good proportion of my close friends stay overnight even if they drove here.
But it's that driveway that is a source of stress. See, it is long. And I have to back out of it. To back out of it, I have a low concrete wall (too low to see in my windshield rearview mirror, or if I look out the back) on one side, and daylilies on the other. Let's just say that I don't have all the daylilies I would like (you should have seen me with the moving van...) Since this past weekend, the non-concrete wall side has these Noma moonrays beyond the daylilies. Oh, and at the concrete wall side, after the concrete, there is the place where my downstairs neighbour parks, so there is car. My margin of error used to be daylilies/unused mulched plot with nothing in it. Now unused mulched plot is the same, but with crappy solar powered lights, and while I don't yet know my neighbours beyond hi, I don't think driving the truck over their newly installed garden lights would make for the best introduction.
Right. Truck. Compounding all of this is that I traded vehicles with Kevin for the week. I have his (much more expensive than my car, much newer than my car, and most importantly, not *my*) truck this week. And the truck has an opaque cap, so all backing up is done by mirrors. I am not particularly skilled at backing up with mirrors. Oh, and his transmission is somewhat different than mine - I would characterize it as "less forgiving", perhaps.
Do you want to know how many rounds of inching up, straightening out, backing up I went through this morning? How about the part where I stalled? Or the part where my neighbour stood at the end of the driveway saying, do I need to direct you? Yeah. It was like that.
I've decided, the best course of action is to work from home this week. And all that food that I'm so keen on... well, my 5K rule means I walk there anyway. (Today's discovery: finally, a store that sells mustard and mayonnaise in tubes. This is one of the things I always envied the Germans for...)
Posted by Johanna at July 29, 2008 08:16 PM