Get Out of my Space

Can you tell what kind of day I had? Generally, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, but some people really flaunt their inconsiderateness. I've only been out of the house a handful of times since I can't drive. Today Mike was off (he worked Friday) and the kids were away so we ran a few errands.

I live in a state heavily populated by the elderly so it's not uncommon to have trouble getting a close space. I've been glared or even yelled at for parking in a disabled space because at first glance they only see a young mom. I'm glad they care whether the privilege is being abused, but let's go over this again: Everyone listening?
Not all handicapped people are old.
Some of us have nice cars.
Some of us have families.
We do not live in parking lots, but we sure do use them!
I digress, I understand that it's hard to tell when a disabled space is being abused in some cases, but there doesn't seem to be anyone checking for this abuse. Mike read me an article about how many people admit to using a relative or spous's permit. There were also people granted temporary tags that renewed them. Why was it so easy for the paper to get this information, but no law enforcement agency seems to be able to do it?

We circled the parking lot for about 5mins before we pulled into an open space, the farthest row from the curb. I unfolded my walker and scooted my non-weight bearing butt out of the car. As I hopped past the full disabled spaces I noticed at least 3 vehicles with no disabled tags of any kind. Give me a break. One sure footed gentlemen clammered into a large van. Mike sneered and spat "he doesn't look disabled." Wait a minute, it might be on the license plate. It was.

What does that prove? Just that the registered owner of the car is permanently disabled. Is that him? No idea. Could he have been suffering from a heart defect or other less visible affliction making it difficult for him to march 100ft to that door? Maybe. I on the other hand am 3wks post op and all the hopping is making my leg cramp. Once I did get to the building there were people smoking outside so I was holding my breath as I hopped, not easy. When my bussiness was complete it was a long hop back to the curb and by the time I got there tears were welling up in my eyes. Mike pulled the car around for me.

What Mike and I think would help would be some sort of priority rating. Top level within 3 weeks of major surgery, severe physical limitations, severe heart issues, etc. Next Level less severe versions of all of these. So on down the line they could be color coded and arranged with degrees of closeness. For people whose conditions would be improved from walking a few feet put them a few more spaces down.

What about people using grandma's tag? Report them! If it's obivous (in my state your driver's license number is printed on the permit) or there's a serious doubt don't let them get away with it. Please don't put yourself in danger. Get their plates to the authorities or tell someone who works in the building the parking lot is for and let them tow them. People have been clearly warned about being fined or towed when they park there so don't feel bad. You're saving someone like me an afternoon in bed recovering from an unnecessary over exertion instead of playing with her kids (or being any part of their day).

Rage

Those (expletive) little (expletives) down at the dealership have incurred my wrath. They have been slow to respond, rude and sent my car home in worse shape than I brought it in for the five long years of my warranty. I generally dislike them. In fact my entire family (Mom, Dad and Sister) drives the same kind of car and have all had so many bad experiences they refuse to return. At one point they did my sister's oil change without putting any oil back in and killed her engine. Bad things happen there.

It's one thing to be a jerk or a scam artist it is another entirely to endanger the lives of my kids. I'm so angry I can barely see straight. It was one thing to spill oil all over my engine during an oil change and send me home to discover thick black smoke pouring out of my hood on a holiday weekend. That was bad. This is worse.

I got pulled over and warned because my headlight was out. When Mike attempted to change the bulb it was fine. He replaced the fuse and on it went. I drove the car for 30min and then it was out again. It shouldn't have been shorting out like that, but it was. Want to know why? Because when the dealership replaced my serpentine belt they hooked a cluster of wires that controls my electrical systems. In the weeks since it has rubbed all the wires exposed causing shorts and a serious fire hazard! I can not imagine what kind of moron would make such a careless mistake nor can I fathom someone malicious enough to purposefully do such a dangerous thing just to secure more business.

They have ignored me struggling with my wheelchair and toddler, called a day later than promised, tried to charge me for things I never requested and even made and admitted careless mistakes before, but this is too much. They couldn't pay me to bring my car back in there. If they wanted to pay me to fix this I'd refuse. They will NEVER touch my car or the car of anyone I care about again, ever. I get ulcer pains at the mention of their name.

That's Crown Buick GMC Suzuki Service Center at 5326 34th Street North St. Petersburg, FL 33714. Stay Clear. The sales staff was kind to me all those years ago, but I would have saved myself a considerable amount of stress and money by skipping the warranty and steering clear of their train wreck of a service center. At this point for the sake of my safety and sanity I will never do business with them again.

A Little Honest Emotion on the Subject

Please, don't be angry at me for not asking for help. It's not in my nature. I fear giving power to the pain and hopelessness by naming it. Please listen when I come to you calmly asking for a hand. That is my desperate plea. You will not see me crack until the damn breaks. It is the only time I allow that awful "weakness" its sway. I can only breath in and out and put one foot in front of the other this way.

When the bus hit me I got one single get well card and last year, when I was the most helpless I have ever been and trying to take care of a baby...It was horrible and lonely. It was an almost stranger who came most often. I saw people once or twice until I was well enough to leave. Most of my relationships remain distant. Did I ask for help? I remember it, but maybe none of them understood the horror I was desperately navigating mostly alone.

I wish I knew where I go wrong. When to stop calmly asking and start tearfully begging. I am so tired, still, always. I don't know how to fix what I so clearly had a part in breaking. I won't allow myself to EVER be as lost and alone as I was after that horrible surgery. Trapped in the house on the couch with a baby crawling around my feet for months. I wanted to "bounce back". I had no frame of reference. I had so little.

Maybe shortly after the halfway point is a good time for catharsis of all the toxic emotions I refused to accept. I still hate all the anger, frustration, fear and guilt so much. I hate that I did that to myself on purpose, to my family.

I hate the recovery process, surgical solutions, sleep deprivation, depression, severe weight loss and the pain. The pain that motivated me to make that choice. The pain that was a result of that choice. The daily pain I don't speak of in hopes that one day it won't be there.

I wish I could have gone into that spinal fusion with knowledge I now possess. I wish I could go back and not get hit by the bus. My time machine would be well worn and I'd probably blink myself out of existence.

The Seventh Circle of Hell

Aka the car circle...If only I could reclaim the hours of my life sucked into that vortex of misery. When Isaac started kindergarten I thought the spectacle was kind of cute. The way parents would park their cars to avoid the car circle and scramble up to the gate and wait. When the first kids begun trickling out parents would stand on tip toe to get a glimpse. With ninja like speed they would grab their child's hand and flee to their waiting cars. The whole thing reminded me of baggage claim at the airport.

We, too, spent the first half of that year parking the car and walking to avoid the car circle. Not long after Christmas break I was pregnant and working nights, so Mike always picked Isaac up. By spring break I was on bed rest. It wasn't until Riley was born in the fall and Mike got his new job that I was back on pick up duty again only this time I had a newborn so there was no avoiding the car circle.

In the early days of Mike's new job he worked at the office Monday-Friday. I often refer to this as the "golden period" of being a stay-at-mom because Mike's absence and my physical state still allowed me autonomy and independence in domestic matters. It was just me and my brand new baby and all those new mommy infatuation chemicals, until pick up time. We would get ready and head over to the school 10-15min before dismissal. If I got lucky, which was rare, Riley would sleep through the whole ordeal. Most days she would sleep for all but the last 5mins and then wail all the way up to claim her brother and the whole ride home. On the worst days she'd wail through the whole thing.

At the end of kindergarten there had been a parent survey sent home in which 98% of the parents who filled it out listed car circle as the biggest problem we had with the school (Mike and I among them). This resulted in two car circles with the students divided in half by grade level. One was in the front of the school where the original had been and one was on the side which had previously been buses only. It did help some, in the way that an Advil might "help" after a root canal.

The problem really is the parents. No one wants to pull all the way up. I swear the people in front of me today were waiting for engraved invitations to move. Is it that the trauma of getting into the actual line to get your kid shocks you into a state in which you believe you are the only person in line? Are two car lengths a reasonable space to leave between cars on your planet? There are people behind you hanging out in the busy intersection and you're leaving extra space? Keep it up, one of these days the parents behind you will descend on your car like the angry mob we are and show no mercy.

These days there's no danger of having to jump in the backseat and nurse the baby, but life's not easy. I still have Riley in tow, parents are not anymore apt to follow the rules and just when you think it can't get any worse it does. I don't leave early anymore, in fact I leave the house no earlier than dismissal time. That was a parking garage revelation. Why does everyone clamor to be on the first two floors of the parking garage? A space close to the elevator on any floor gets you there just as quickly. So, why would I wait in my car burning gas when I can let things die down from home and ultimately we get home at the same time anyway.

The school year's winding down and today I was smiling to myself that we were leaving this car circle behind us forever. Isaac's new school is less than two blocks from our house. You can see it from the corner. So, to the idiots who went the wrong way on the one way, the Lexus and VW who refused to ever pull up a reasonable distance, the guy who parked and got out at the front of the freaking line and the mom waiting at the wrong number (that's only today) I will not miss you. I only hope your children have better capacity to follow simple directions! I mean geez, there's less than two weeks of school left, nobody's new here.

I will conduct myself as I always have by following the rules and showing common sense and consideration, but once the last pick up is made on the last day car circle can kiss my butt!

Hello, Dave.

I apologize for this not being "on topic", but sometimes even the best of us color outside the lines. I promise to talk about parenting and technology very soon, it's still percolating.

Let me preface this entry by saying how deeply and passionately in love with my G.P.S. I truly am. It is the great love of my life, as far as modern technology goes. I never would have survived my years in LA without it. It is an amazing gadget, 90% of the time. Every so often, it has a bad hair or doesn't get enough sleep or something. On those days, bad things happen.

Yesterday, we set off as a family in the afternoon, after nap time. We were originally destined for the splash pad to meet one of Riley's baby friends. I'd been there 3 or 4 times before, but it's been too cold to go for months now. I had vague memories of where it was, but it didn't matter because we had the G.P.S. We loaded up and punched in the address which seemed straightforward enough. I glazed over in the the passenger seat listening to the noise of a backseat full of excited children.

The next thing I knew we were exiting the highway early and weaving through unsavory neighborhoods. Mike's blood pressure started to rise as the strange commands to drive through neighborhoods on small side streets continued. I, having loved and depended on the G.P.S. this long, convince myself it's showing us a short cut.

After about 10 minutes of what felt like gratuitous turns I started to worry too. I double checked the address and the step by step directions. I didn't know what to think. That's when Mike asked (I'll spare you the expletives) if I had it set to no highways. Oopsie. Still, what a route!

The kicker was we arrived, finally, frazzled and irritable and had to immediately turn around and leave. That's a story for another day. We decided as long as everyone was in the car we'd run a few quick errands. We made our now weekly trip to Joann's Fabric and then debated whether or not to hit Toys-R-Us while we were in the neighborhood. We did and the kids made out like bandits. I felt so guilty about getting them all excited about the splash pad and then having to leave so they got an awesome kiddie pool with slide, squirt guns and a crazy caterpillar sprinkler guy. It was the last stop that was the problem.

Mike needed to go to a certain Lowes to get paint for his car. Apparently, ours is sold out and this one had a whole case of the stuff. Also, it's important to note Riley soiled her regular diaper and I only had swim diapers with me so we were on borrowed time there. Mike looked up the address on his phone and we eagerly punched it in to the G.P.S., everyone deserves a second chance.

It was a nightmare once again. Weird commands to leave major roads and make strange overly complicated sets of turns. We double checked avoidances to make sure we were having the same issue twice, but it turned out the route was just ridiculously over complicated. The kids were tired, Riley had finished her water and was demanding more which I didn't have and traffic was increasing every second. Maybe there used to be construction on that road or something...

As the stress level in the car was reaching critical mass the G.P.S. ordered one last ridiculous set of 5 turns where one turn the other direction would have put us in the parking lot and we were now sitting on the wrong side of a busy 4 lane road staring at our destination. I turned the G.P.S. off with gusto at this point. Stupid thing.

The time before that was so much worse because we were in an unfamiliar state(s). We had driven from LA to Georgia with no problems. I even remember thinking, "Gosh, I guess trip-tics are obsolete now." I once misread one and drove 3hrs out of my way, but that couldn't happen with my lovely G.P.S.. I've been wrong before. It was the last leg of the journey and we'd come so far unscathed.

The trouble started when we realized we'd be driving through Atlanta at rush hour (YIKES!). We set it to avoid highways and checked the route, scrolled through the whole route zooming in on the map and passed it back and forth between us. When we were satisfied we'd done it we were off. The miles and hours ticked by. I may even have slept, but at some point I noticed signs saying Alabama. "Mike, why don't any of the signs say Georgia?" He wasn't sure either. We kept going for about 20minutes and then we were sure something was wrong and Isaac had to pee (or had an accident or something I'm fuzzy, but I remember urgency).

When we stopped I took the opportunity to ask where in the heck we were. We'd been driving almost exactly the time it should have taken to get home and we weren't there. It turned out we'd been driving the wrong direction this whole time. We were stunned.

It turns out all that trying to avoid Atlanta tapping of the screen somehow added Sneaky Pete's Hot Dogs in Alabama as a via point! So Mike had been taking surface roads the opposite direction of where were headed for hours because the G.P.S. thought we really wanted hot dogs! Don't you think there should be a confirmation message if you set a via point over 20 miles in the opposite direction of your destination? My email makes me confirm like 10 times if I call something junk and that's reversable. Geez, G.P.S.!

The detour was traumatic and we did end up driving through Atlanta in horrific traffic after all. There were times in LA when the G.P.S. would insist I get on the highway somewhere and there was no longer an on ramp or there was construction and no matter what buttons I pushed or which way I drove it sent me back there. Usually only when I was running late for an important audition.

I find myself laughing at the car insurance commercial where the G.P.S. commands a turn and the guy smashes into another car because it seems so silly. We're still the drivers, we have eyes and brians. If the G.P.S. is wrong we should ignore it with confidence.

I think the issue is people have never trusted an earlier piece of technology the way we trust our G.P.S.. Maybe our cars, but we generally control the vehicle, and not the other way around. The G.P.S. barks orders and we happily follow, trusting it to take us where we want to go. It's a big responsibility. So, I guess it makes sense that 3 or 4 times in the last 5yrs mine has buckled under the pressure.