Today, I drove truck.
No, not a semi, or anything commercial. Rather, my husband's 1991ish gray Chevy... somethingorother truck. Looks kind of like this: http://www.mautofied.com/listing-100087603.htm
Anyway, the power steering pump on my car went out completely, or so we figure, making it very difficult for me to drive. For example, last week one day, it took me nearly 10 minutes to get out of a parking spot because I couldn't get it to crank hard enough and fast enough to make any decent turns out of the spot, and therefore I had to repeat the process over and over and over and over and... you get the hint.
Well, I decided I couldn't take it anymore, and Jake decided it was probably pretty unsafe for me to continue driving it as is, so he told me to take his truck.
I'd never driven a truck before. I used to drive my grandma's station wagon, or my mom's giant van, but never a truck. For some damn reason, I was nervous as all heck to get in this morning and pull away. Of course, I had no brief introduction to the truck (which, by the way, sports a license plate dedicated to me (GRNEYEZ) so that's cool), and I couldn't figure out how to get the seat to slide forward, or that you had to have the key not pushed all the way in, or that the RND...blahblahblah symbols were in a strange spot on the dash. But, I eventually got the thing started and off to work I went.
Not surprisingly, really, I made it there in one piece, albeit, a little high strung.
On the way home, I realized I feel really small in the truck. It's really high up. So high, in fact, that I have a slightly difficult time getting into it, especially in the driver seat, and then reaching the door to pull it closed. Ah well. But when I was driving down the interstate and a couple of motorcyclists pulled in front of me, it reminded me of a scene on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation where Clarke Griswald pulls the family car under a semi.
I guess it's a paradox, now that I think about it. I felt small, but also pretty massive.
Oh, and the truck is kind of noisy. It scared me a few times. Not abnormally loud by any means, but noisier than I generally recall.
The biggest downfall to my trucker experience: the bumpy ride of the truck I believe is what is causing my all day nausea. Ah well, rather that than a car accident.
And in other news, I'm pretty sure the Little Ninja (our baby) doesn't sleep. I read all over that a fetus generally sleeps 90% of the day, but I'm almost CERTAIN I feel it moving at least that often. Well, maybe that's an exageration, but really, about 75% of the day I feel movement. And it still throws me off. I'm totally not used to it. Tonight, I was reclining in the chair and Wendell was relaxing across my abdomen (which he can still do, lucky him), and I could feel my heartbeat, Wendell's heartbeat, and the Ninja moving all at once. Trippy.
Darn it. I lost my comment. And it was a good one too.
ReplyDeleteOk, let's try again.
ReplyDeleteI like that you used both "damn" and "heck" in the same sentence.
I was sorting through old papers today and found a bunch of letters from you from 2007. Awesome! Made me want to send real cards to people, but I probably won't.
I hope you name your baby Little Ninja for reals.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I'm a little surprised that you'd never driven a truck before! But I guess if no one in your family has a truck, it would be kind of hard to. And I grew up on a farm, so it was a given, haha.
ReplyDeleteAs for Little Ninja, my doctor told me that I should feel movement at least once every 10 minutes, twice every 20 minutes, etc. I think they do sleep a lot but it's for very short periods of time!!