Me Again

*Well I now officially have a new driving instructor; my neighbor. Or should I refer to her as my ruthless coach...haha just kidding. But I should have known I wouldn't have been scot free after the driving to piano incident. Last Saturday she called me up and said she wanted to take me out to practice. So I said okay, thinking we would just be taking a nice little ride around town. Plus I got to drive my dad's car, which I love. Anyways, I should have known she had a trick up her sleeve....As I drove through town, I started to get kind of panicky because we were almost to the end of town and she hadn't mentioned turning around yet. Then she gave her grave anouncement. She was taking me out on the highway. Oh boy did I get panicky. Even though it was a small, relatively non-crowded highway, I hadn't been on one of those since driver's ed. Plus I didn't really want to tackle this with a non-family member who might not hesitate to sue me for everything I owned if I got us both killed. Well I guess it'd be kind of hard to sue me if we were both dead, but that's beside the point. Plus my family was having enough troubles as it was. The last thing we needed was for me to get in a humongous wreck on the highway. (Not to mention it might seriously besmirch my reputation). Well I expressed a small part of my misgivings aloud, and my neighbor responded by laughing (the heartless woman) and saying, "Now relax, dear. I'm not throwing you to the wolves." Well maybe not in her opinion, but she sure was in mine....
Well when we got to the traffic light right beside the entrance to the highway, my hands were sweating like crazy and my back was starting to hurt because I was arched so tightly over the steering wheel. I was so nervous I momentarily forgot about the traffic light and almost ran a red light onto the highway. (Luckily that didn't happen). Well we made it out there, and to my surprise my instinct turned from "brake brake brake" to "speed speed speed". Seriously once you're on the highway speed is soothing let me tell you...I even started to relax a little bit, (but not too much mind you), and managed to unarch my back at least a fraction of an inch. Well I was going along great until my kind-hearted neighbor decided she wanted me to get off at the next exit, and then merge back on. If I was nervous before it was nothing compared to how nervous I was now. You might not know this but I hate merging. I detest it. Whenever I start to merge my foot always wants to hit the brake, which is of course the wrong thing to do. Well I decided the only thing I could do about it was grit my teeth and do it, so I got off, and then started down the entrance ramp feeling like I was heading to my doom and sending my neighbor to her's...Well after checking crazily over my shoulder about a million times, I finally inched onto the highway. (Okay not inched, but it wasn't extremely fast I'll give you that). Well I was extremely relieved I had survived that incident, but then she made me do it again, and again, and again. And when we were done driving that day, she said we would do it all again Monday, and probably many more days after that...Well that didn't really make my day, but hey at least I'll be ready to get my license by the time I'm through with all this. But I can't say I'll be sorry when all these driving lessons are over. Luckily tomorrow is our last one of the week, (thank goodness!).

*I don't know if I told you this or not, but last week we got the bad news that the doctors have no more medicine to help my dad with, and even if they could shrink his tumor (which has grown a lot), they probably couldn't fix the brain damage his tumor has inflicted. So yeah it's been tough around here. But at least going off his medicine is making him feel a little better....I'll let you know when I know anything else about him....

*Well besides all this other stuff I mentioned, on November 18th I have to sing in another one of those dreaded studio recitals. Ugggh. It has to be another Italian song too, so knowing my luck I'll probably get up there, look into all those searching eyes, and forget all the words (including my entire English vocabulary). Ahh oh well.