Daphne and Lee Go to the Airport

Today, I drove to the airport for the first time.

It was horrible.

I wasn't alone- I had my mother with me, and I had Lee- but it was still a stressful driving experience.

Lee and I have been together for two weeks, but I really can't imagine life without him now. He's always so calm, so collected, he never, ever yells at me, and he's always there to steer me back onto the right path whenever I freak out.

But today, we had another argument.

I suppose it was inevitable- it happens in every relationship, but I thought...I thought we were solid, you know? But no...Lee tried to tell me to take Citylink despite the fact that I didn't want to take a tollroad. I suppose it was faster, but I wanted to take the freeway- it being FREE and all- but Lee wouldn't have a bar of it and kept whining on about it for six kilometres.

I told him to shut up but I couldn't really take my eyes off the road while I was driving.

My mum was of no help whatsoever as her sense of direction is worse than mine- which is really saying a LOT- and at the third intersection from home, we'd already had a massive argument and so she stayed snarky and silent at me for the whole trip.

I took umbrage at that fact that she cried, "Stop stop STOP!" when I moved the car forward in the 'hover' lane to turn right, despite the fact that it was pretty damn OBVIOUS that I wasn't going to jump out into oncoming traffic and was bringing to the car to a stop.

Furthermore, she leant forward and blocked my view completely so I cried out, equally panicked, for her to sit back.

I pointed out that (a) I was not an idiot; and (b) she didn't have to shriek like I was some kind of moron.

She said, "I didn't yell 'stop stop stop!' I said to you, 'There's a car coming.'"

Uh huh.

It's like the difference between going, "Hmm, that Jensen Ackles is rather a fine specimen of male," and going, "DAMN IT HE'S HOT!"

Luckily, my Rihanna CD is rather good at breaking awkward silences, and Lee chimed in every so often. Mum didn't trust Lee at all.

However, I realised after detouring through the city, that something was wrong. Lee still kept insisting we take Citylink, until at the traffic lights, I checked his setttings and found out THAT HIS DEFAULT SETTING MEANT THAT HE WASN'T AVOIDING TOLL ROADS.

"Aww, Lee honey, no wonder you got confused."

"Recalculating," Lee said, and off we went again.

Not a peep from him about taking the tollroad. He got me to the airport (although it took extra due to the fact that I didn't realise he wasn't avoiding tolls until we were like 45 min into our trip) but my Dad's flight was 40 minutes late.

After a long time circling and waiting for my Dad to call, I finally went, "I'M PAYING FOR PARKING. BLAAAARGGHHH AAAAAARGGGHHHH AAARGGGGGHHHH."

(Well, words to that extent.)

And you know what? When you hook up my Nokia 6300 to Lee, both support voice-activated dialling.

So I said, "Dad."

"Dad," Lee repeated, and it DIALLED.

COOL.

I introduced Dad to Lee. Dad didn't really say much, but I get the feeling that he didn't disapprove. He even got him to navigate for the last ten minutes, just to put him through his paces.

So Lee and I cleared things up. We've had a couple of minor disagreements and few hurdles, but I'm sure that if we spend a little more time together, things will be smoother.

Cheers to all non-tangible male electronic voices everywhere.

Ye of Little Faith

I officially finished exams yesterday morning (woot!) so in the afternoon, I hopped into my little car and drove off to visit a friend who lives about ten minutes away. It was the first time I'd ever been to his house, but I checked whereis.com.au before I went and the route didn't exactly look like rocket science.

Twenty minutes after I set out, I called my friend.

"Hello!" said I, brightly.

"You're lost," said he, matter-of-factly.

It wasn't a question. It was a STATEMENT. Somehow, he knew.

I honestly wish that I could have taken umbrage at this...unfortunately, he was absolutely correct.

(I did get slightly lost. But in my defence, I was only 1 1/2 streets away. Let's not even go into how I parked 2 feet from the curb. And couldn't reverse out of the driveway properly.)

I don't know what's wrong with my spatial skills. It's not like I can't read a map- I can do so when I'm stationary, sitting calmly at a table without a steering wheel in front of me, and carefully turning the Melway upside down at each turn.

But when I'm driving? Different story.

I like to blame the Asian-Female-Driver-Gene.

Otherwise, I just have to admit to my own basic incompetence....

More City Driving Escapades/Movie Review: Juno

"In my opinion, the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with."

I loved Juno.

I saw it on Saturday night in pitch darkness at the Moonlight Cinema. It was quirky and bloody hilarious, although I think I MIGHT HAVE A PERMANENT ELBOW MARK IN THE SQUISHY FLESH OF MY RIGHT SIDE because my Alias-obsessed friend Kris kept nudging me in the side everytime Jennifer Garner came onscreen, and she kept making this funny noise that I normally associate with hyperventilating.

(N.B to Kris: Hey, if I didn't embarrass you on my blog, what kind of friend would I be?!)

Anyway, it was all peachy once we were actually seated on picnic rugs in the botanical gardens, but we hadn't realised that the Moomba festival was also going on- and so parking was, to put in succinctly, an absolute bitch. My friend Loui drove us in, as I am possibly the worst city driver ever- in fact, I suck at reading maps full stop. I must say, I was in absolute awe of Louise's parking skills- she was driving The Family Car, which was a very large station wagon...a very large MANUAL station wagon.

We couldn't find a parking space ANYWHERE, even though we circled for 25 minutes like a big white station-wagon-esque bird of vehicular prey. Up down, up down, circling, through the slip lane, back again, three phone calls to Kris later...we attempted to park in a permit zone, we deliberated on whether we could get away with obstructing an old and unused driveway, and we ended up in a very tight residential court with no room to swing a cat, attempting to park whilst not blocking a residential driveway.

Louise ended up doing some kind of three-point correction which was nothing short of spectacular, if you minus the crunching sound of her towbar hitting something in the dark- and then, we heard a voice out of the darkness like an angel of parking mercy:

"Hey, did you guys want our space? We're moving out now."

And that was that.

Kris drove me back to the initial rendezvous spot where I'd gone in with Louise. She knew exactly where to go and exactly how to get there (one day I hope to achieve this kind of zen-like clarity) and off we went with no navigational problems whatsoever, singing blithely along to TLC, but with the windows rolled up because earlier in the night (or rather, early hours of the morning) someone had seen fit to throw a bottle at us as we were standing on a street corner. And pumping JoJo out of a little hatchback doesn't quite cut it with the hardcore teenage homies, even though the bass in Kristine's car is probably capable of moving one's bowels.

In comparison to Loui's reversing skills, I was forced to drive my version of The Family Car on Sunday morning- which is a freaking MASSIVE Ford. My dad had taken my hatchback but neglected to reverse the car out- which sits on what is actually a little patch of grass which is at a perfect NINETY DEGREE ANGLE to the driveway. To further complicate things everything is bordered by some concrete steps and a rather painful edge of decorative rocks. It's like one of those horrible trigonometry problems where you have to calculate the angles of reversing.

I can do it in any other small car (albeit with MUCH difficulty) but The Family Car.

The only good thing about the Family Car is that when people see the P plates, and see my Death-Star sized car ("Look at the size of that thing!") coupled with the fact that when they squint, there is a terrified looking female Asian driver clutching the steering wheel...they give me space.

It's like being one of the Four Horsemen of the Vehicular Apocalypse. If I had to choose three other fellow Horsemen, they'd be Old Person Driver, Bloody Volvo Driver and Stupid-Young-Man-With-Subwoofer Driver. (Honourable mentions to people who own a Dodge. How the hell do you get enough fuel to run that TANK?!)

Anyway...so I was running late for work as I had to open up the store- and I had spent ten minutes looking for my hatchback's keys and freaking out when I saw the garage was empty before remembering Dad had taken it- and so I was very stressed. And then I hear this almighty CRUNCH and oooh look, I think that was the back fence.

No wuckers, Daphne. We'll just try it again, but slooooower...

...CRUNCH. CRACKLE.

There is now a rather nice little fissure in the wooden slats of our fence, except my mum insists that it was there before already, so no one actually cared.

In the end, I had to call Mum and get her to come down and reverse it for me. Which was pathetic, but necessary.

And that, friends, is why I like to drive hatchbacks.