driving a stick shift when you're an automatic kind of girl

I've been driving Jimmy's little car for the last 3 weeks since he left Sao Paulo. When he (as the diplomat) left the country, I (as just the diplomat's wife) lost the privilege of using the special consular blue license plates. So our minivan was turned over to its new owner and Mac and I inherited the VW Gol, which is this awful little 2-door hatchback that has the bare basics. We're talking really just 4 wheels and a steering wheel in a metal box with no AC, no radio and worst of all: it's a manual transmission.

I didn't learn to drive a manual transmission until I was 30 years old in Mozambique. We bought this enormous Land Rover and Jimmy loved driving it so much. And I loved being chauffered about. I never had to make an excuse about why it was better for him to drive; I honestly didn't know how.

And then Jimmy broke his foot in a silly basketball game and suddenly, our trips to the grocery store were no more (the grocery store being in South Africa, meaning a whole 'nother country). So I had to learn; otherwise we would've starved due to lack of groceries. We loaded up one afternoon for the first lesson and there are probably still Mozambican children, now teenagers, laughing at the memory of this big red Land Rover bucking and jerking along side streets of Maputo being driven by this white woman who clearly didn't know anything. It was awful and humiliating and I clearly did not graduate driver's school on this one lesson.

Then Jimmy's dad very unexpectedly died and he returned to the US for the funeral. I remember very clearly my first attempt at driving the car by myself. I came out of the house and told our house guard to open the gate because I needed to go out. Kenny (as we called him because that was the closest to an English name that his African dialect name sounded like) blocked my path and wagged his finger no. I hate that finger-wagging thing. I told Kenny again that I needed to go out so to please open the gate. (I was going to a baby shower that I really could have walked to, but I thought this would be good short-range practice.) Kenny then proceeded to tell me that the patron was the only one who could drive the big car. I told Kenny to open the gate because the patrona was going out for a drive. What could he do but open the gate? I did get the car in reverse and backed out past the gate. The only mistake I made was turning the wheel too soon and driving over the curb instead of straight down the driveway, but this car was built for off-roading so going over the curb was no great shakes. My last memory as I drove off that day was of Kenny standing by the gate, shaking his head and I'm sure making a tsk-tsk noise.

Long story short, I learned how to drive just fine and became confident enough to drive to South Africa and around town. We sold the Land Rover and immediately went back to automatic transmission until we moved to Brasilia and Jimmy bought the little Gol. I drove it around some there and here in Sao Paulo (close to home), but after 8 years of intermittent manual transmission driving, I have maintained an unnatural fear of hills. I wish I could say of just steep hills, but we're talking any hill of any minor degree.

In the last 3 weeks, I've kept my radius limited to just a couple miles, namely as far as the consulate. Last week when I took Mac and his friends to the movies, we took a taxi primarily because it would be dark when we came home (and I hadn't driven that car in the dark too much), secondarily because I don't think that car is the safest and putting two non-related people at risk seemed burdensome, but, if I tell the truth, we also used a taxi because I was nervous about the ramps in the parking garage. What would I do if I got stuck in traffic on the ramp and couldn't get up the hill?

Let me just tell you, when you're used to going out and about in this city, limiting yourself to a 2-mile radius stinks. The other problem is that we gave away our GPS as part of the minivan sale and I had become quite dependent on our girl, so it was nerve-wracking to think about getting lost in this city. One wrong turn here can land you in some scary neighborhoods. But I started branching out more this week. Today I went to Jardins, which I said I'd never drive to in Jimmy's car. But I had the choice of trying to drive or take an expensive taxi, and my frugal tendencies won out.

So I mapped it all out on Google Maps, but our printer was packed up this week, so I had to handwrite out the directions and I couldn't print the street map out. The only part of the directions that made me nervous was that I had to go through a tunnel on Ave. Reboucas.

A basic principle: if you go down in a tunnel, you very likely must come back up eventually. So I prayed and prayed and prayed that the traffic wouldn't be stopped in this particular tunnel. I might as well have prayed that the sun rise in the west. The sun always rises in the east and the traffic is always stopped in this tunnel, and today was no exception on either account.

So then I prayed to please just let me get up the hill and out of the tunnel in one movement without having to stop. No dice. Now let me tell you that we're not talking Mt. Everest. In fact, I am the first to admit that I am literally making a mountain out of the proverbial molehill. In fact, when you're stopped on this "hill", you feel like you're on flat land. It's only because you've seen the incline from a distance that you even realize the road goes up.

Exacerbating my nerves was this white Mercedes delivery truck behind me. The driver chose to minimize the space between my rear and his front so I'm quite sure we were 2 inches apart. This was fine when we were flat and he obviously thought I was an expert driver. And he probably even thought it when we first stopped on the hill and restarted when traffic moved. I expertly shifted to first gear, had no backwards rolling and did great.

The second restart on the hill didn't go as well. I rolled backwards (didn't hit him, though) but got so nervous that I didn't very smoothly lift off the clutch and push the gas, so there was a little squealing and a little bucking of the car, but I didn't stall out. Thank God for that because I really would've just walked away from the car if that had happened. I would have called the new owner and said your car is waiting in the Reboucas tunnel. Listen for all the angry drivers honking and you'll find it.

Now I was really nervous about the guy behind me because I knew that my confidence was shaken and he stood a really good chance of getting hit by me. So I did the only thing I could think of to get him to back off a little. I turned on my hazard lights. So yes, I looked like a total driving moron but he stayed way back and I got out of the tunnel (2 more stops and starts before we got up that interminable hill). Of course, by then my hands and feet were so sweaty that I could have soaked through 3 washcloths, but I did it.

So I met my dear friend Gisele for lunch and told her that I'd meet her anywhere for lunch in the next 11 days that didn't require going through the Reboucas tunnel. I love her, but my nerves can't take it!

in addition to the traffic - another highlight of my day

Emergency room visits and the resultant bills make me nervous. When I took Mac to the ER on Mother's Day, I told the billing guy that they really needed to bill me quickly as we were leaving the country soon for good. What I was secretly hoping is that the billing would take months/years and by then, nobody would know where we were. Because surely X-rays, doctor's fees, all this medicine that we took home with us, breathing treatments, etc is expensive, right?

Yesterday morning I got an email from the consulate that said the bill had arrived for Mac's visit. YIKES. I assured them I'd come by today to pick up the bill and pay it, unless I had to harvest a kidney first to cover the expense. (And yes, we can get reimbursed by Blue Cross Blue Shield, but that's in the future.)

I picked up the bill today and you will not believe how much it was for. Or I should say how little it was for. Just R$824, which is about $405. I think that is so dirt cheap for an ER visit. I'm sure BCBS will decide it's extraordinarily expensive but considering that a routine visit to the pediatrician here for a well-child checkup costs something like $150, I think $400 is totally worth it for all that great treatment we got at the ER. (Plus I don't like our pediatrician here at all so thankfully we only had to visit him once in nearly 2 years).

Whew! Breathing a sign of relief that I didn't have to sell that kidney after all.

(Another bit of unexpected service from the hospital - on the Thursday after we were there on Sunday, we got a big envelope in the mail from the hospital that included a CD of his X-rays. How cool is that? Mac loves looking at his bones!)

Sao Paulo traffic

I could write a list that would take me from now until next Friday of all the things I'll miss about Sao Paulo.

Traffic would not make the list.

Today I had lunch with friends in the neighborhood of Vila Nova Conceicao, a mere 8.9 kilometers from door to door. Guess how long it took me to drive those short 5.5 miles back home in the rain? A whopping 48 minutes (and I was actually counting on much longer because of the rain). You do the math, but that's some slow-going.

Because I was sitting still for so long in traffic, I got a cool photo of this motorcycle that was having a serious car wash. I kept waiting for the motorcycle to be tipped over by the force of the water, which was just gushing down the street (you can tell how fast it was going by the blurriness on the bottom left side of the photo).

The Story Tales turns 1!

One year ago today, I posted our first blog report about our trip to the Pantanal. Time sure does fly. What fun we've had!

the packout and the letter project

"They work hard for the money
so hard for it honey
They work hard for the money
so you better treat them right"
(The Fink moving team during their lunch break siesta on the balcony)

I'm sitting here in a near-empty apartment. The walls echo but I am sooooo glad everything is gone and I can scratch "the packout" off my "To Worry About" list.

Mac had a total meltdown when he got home and saw that his playroom was now just a vacant space. We are talking Grade A, lay on the floor and cry sort of meltdown. I felt so bad for the poor little guy and started thinking that maybe I should have devoted one of our 4 suitcases just to toys. I told him I'd call the moving people back and they could unload his toys for him to enjoy these last 2 weeks but he'd never see them again OR we could be apart from the toys for these last 2 weeks (plus some months later unbeknownst to him) and have them to play with again in SC. He snapped out of his hissy fit pretty quickly and decided 2 weeks apart was okay. Crisis averted.

We also completed his Kindergarten Letter Project tonight. His friend Edgar chose the letter "O" for Mac while Mac was out with pneumonia. Mac and I had a serious altercation about the letter project. It could be a poster, book, mobile, etc and Mac chose to do a poster. All he wanted on his poster was a big "O" in the middle and some words around the big "O" that started with that letter. I thought that sounded awfully boring. After all, you have but a second or two to make a great impression and to show your display's pop and sparkle and all that. I suggested he draw pictures of the o words or cut pictures out of magazines. No dice. He wanted boring. So he started yesterday on our one sheet of loaned poster paper (did I mention we were packing out? The Kindergarten Letter Project came at a really bad time in my life!). The initial result didn't go so well. A photo follows. The orange words and scratched-out mistakes were the original attempt. The rest is where the magic marker bled through from the finished product.

After we dried the tears caused by making mistakes on our one piece of paper, I convinced Mac that in order to have familial peace and harmony, he really needed to write his o words on other pieces of paper and we (okay, I, but this is really the only part I did in the whole project) would cut them out and tape them on after he did his big "O" in the middle. You will notice some pretty fancy cutwork there. Since we just had the one piece of poster paper, we just flipped that paper over and used the back side. It's not the pretty side, but the rough, brown finish gives some texture and background color to his spectacular display of "O" words. I told him he needed to put his name on it, so where did he put it? Yes, right in the middle of the big "O". You'll notice he's going by James now and not Mac. He told me the other day he wanted to be called James, but that's a topic for another day. He gets his penmanship skills from his moma - pretty nice handwriting, don't you think?

the Susan diet

Remember when The Jared Diet was all the rage at Subway?

Well I've decided that I'd like to start The Susan Diet that would involve eating a reasonable portion of nachos at least once a day everyday. Would I lose weight by some mysterious quirk of my stomach quickly metabolizing all that yummy, gooeyness of melted cheese and chicken and tomatoes and guacamole and beans and those oh-so-delicious crunchy tortilla chips?

the noon report

These movers are definitely eating their Wheaties!

This morning they took out all the boxes that are going to State Department storage (weighed, inventoried and cross-checked against my inventory) and they finished packing all the SC stuff except for the playroom. It's a short countdown until everything material in our lives (except what fits in 4 suitcases and 2 carry-ons) is packed up and out of here.

I got a little nostalgic this morning watching it all being carted out, knowing that we won't see it for more than 14 months minimum. Not nostalgic for the "stuff" but for the memories behind the stuff, like who gave it to us or where we bought it on vacation. We don't have the greatest material possessions, but what we've got is packed with memories. It's tough to keep it out of sight when you like to be reminded of those memories.