The beaver is a proud and noble animal
Notes from a bemused canuck
Katy brought Annie home today, so we are now dog owners. Let the second-guessing, have-we-done-something-stupid worrying begin :)
She’s had some food and some water, had a bit of a sniff of the garden, but we’re a long way off a harmonious household because the cats seem very unimpressed and Bean hasn’t seen her yet.
Hopefully things will settle down bit by bit with not too much fuss. Watch this space :)
Tolstoy’s vet bill so far is over 1300 quid, and he hasn’t even been operated on yet. Shudder to think what the final bill will be…
It’s one and a half hour later and things are pretty much the same, except that Katy and I feel like the worst parents on earth.
I had a feeling that things had gone a bit too smoothly up to now for our return to the UK. Ben has been wailing for the last hour and we have no idea why. He’s not running a fever, doesn’t want anything to eat or drink, has had calprofen for the large molar he’s cutting and still, he’s wide awake when HR should gave been asleep for 3 hours now.
I hate not knowing what to do. The only thing left now is to let him cry it out but that’s one of the hardest things to do.
It’s so out of character for him and it happens so seldom that it always sends me into full dithering mode.
Le fret.
I had my first lesson on a 500cc bike today and it has thrown a spanner in the works. I was fairly convinced that I’d just pack the lessons in and simply buy a 125cc and just keep ridding on L plated, renew my CBT every two years and be content. I’d play it safe and not face the possibility of failing the eye exam and losing all that I’d achieved.
Except that now, everything has changed. The 500cc is so much more easy to ride, not to mention fun. I finally had a bike up to 60 and feel comfortable with it at that speed – and that’s saying a hell of a lot considering that it was raining today during the ride! I actually had a blast today – rain and all.
Everybody seems to think that I’m overthinking the whole eye thing. All the instructors are happy with my eyesight and Katy hit it on the head when she said that I’d regret not trying for the brass ring. She’s right. I want my Bonneville, dagnabbit.
We were woken up at 6am this morning with a rather large and unexpected crash. When I went downstairs to investigate, Reenie was looking all guilty and pitiful and the glass tank in which we keep the hamster had crash landed from the top of the TV unit onto the coffee table. The glass-topped coffee table.
Sigh. It could have been a lot worse. Only the tank was broken and the hamster, while stressed and a bit shook up, seemed ok. He’s chilling out in a tupperware box in a dark corner for now until we go get a new tank later today. The bean didn’t even wake up from all the commotion. Once we got everything cleaned up, we went back to bed. Katy’s snoring away right now but I haven’t been able to go back to bed.
Nice way to start a lazy Sunday…
You’d think that it would be hard to spend 3000 pounds in 2 weeks when you’re not actually buying anything but you’d be wrong. Shit! Fuck! Brick!!!
And to top this evening off, I’ve been kicked out of my own bed because Katy is snoring so loudly I can still hear it with a pair of earplugs. And that fucking cat is still trying to break into the house.
Merry fucking Christmas.
So far, I’ve had 3 driving lessons. The first one was only on a closed course to try get to grips with the basics of clutch control and low-speed manoeuvring. The other 2 were mostly throw-you-in-the-deep-end on the road. I have been both thrilled and terrified and I’m a bit wrung out.
I’m at a quandary here. It seems like I have a triple-whammy going against me. I’ve never driven before, so I’m a total newb for roadcraft. This would explain why I cut across oncoming traffic while doing a right-hand turn and almost got run over twice on roundabouts (having said that, Joe told me that every new driver does stupid shit like that). My eyesight – being its normal self – makes it difficult for me to read the instrument gauges easily (the speedo mostly is a git – it’s in KPH and has a small inner dial in MPH, but it’s painted brown on black and I can’t make it out unless I lean in, which is not a good thing to do when you’re doing 50 MPH). So that means that I have difficulty maintaining the correct speed for the road I’m on, and that’s dangerous. Both of those combined as well make it difficult for me to anticipate things well enough in advance for me to react appropriately, like judging the correct speed to take a bend or timing gaps to enter the flow of traffic. The final whammy is confidence. I’ve told myself all my life that I can’t drive, and now I’m trying to prove myself wrong. All of that taken together at once is proving… difficult, dangerous, scary.
I had a good long chat with the instructors at CamRider. I can’t commend them enough. They’re being really professional and genuine about the whole process. What it boils down to is that they don’t want to just write me off, they don’t want me to just write me off and they don’t want to just keep taking my money if this is something that won’t be safe in the long run. The head instructor, who I was with on the 3rd lesson, tells me that if he thought I was untrainable or unsafe, he’d stop things then and there. He says that no single problem in itself is a no-go. He’s trained people with worse eyesight than me. He’s trained complete newbies before. We just need to address things a little bit at a time and find a solution that works for me.
The thing is that on a closed circuit or a cul-de-sac, I can handle the bike correctly. My clutch control has already gotten a lot better in those 3 sessions and I can do the Module 1 manoeuvres. The real problem is that when I go out in the real world, all of that control and confidence goes out the window. I get flustered and I start doing stupid – and potentially dangerous – things.
Again though, the instructors tell me that this isn’t anything they haven’t seen before. I’m probably just over-thinking things and making my demons bigger than they are.
There have been fun moments though. The rat race in the Villages and the straight road to Sawston were really cool. On the other hand, having my first real road ride while it’s pissing it down with rain and having both the inside and outside of my helmet visor (as well as my glasses) sopping wet while on a national speed limit road was… not a fun moment. I was a bit wired that night.
So. Where we’re at now is that I have a one-on-one lesson tomorrow morning where it’s just going to be me and an instructor and we’ll assess the situation after that. If they think I can’t, then so be it. I’ll have at least tried. If they think I can, we can work on a plan so that I can think I can.
I am very anxious at the moment. We’ve just had the boiler replaced, and we had to do unexpected repairs to the car in the past couple of months (two tires and a catalytic converter). Now it would seem that the car’s AC has packed it in. I don’t know how much that’s going to cost, but I do know we don’t have that money.
Beastie is pushing all of my buttons by being a tired git these days. The only time I seem to be happy to have him around is when he’s sleeping. Otherwise, I’m very quite happy to be at work and away from the tantrums. This will get worse before it gets better.
Katy and I suck at being frugal. To whit: in this month, we bought a new boiler, a new patio door, two new tires for the car and now, it would seem, part of the muffler needs replacing (of course, the part that wasn’t repaired less than a year ago and now under warranty). Fun times ahead!
I’m beginning to freak out a bit about our monetary situation. Over the course of a year, it’s not too bad but it just seems to be piling on all of a sudden and we still have a trip to Canada to somehow shoehorn into our finances, and since I now finally have my license, I’d like to be able to actually drive. MORE MONEY, YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!
*fret!*