While everyone
else is getting ready for Thanksgiving, I smile because we have already had
ours! It turned out that so many of our
family could not be here for the real Thanksgiving, but could be here over
Veterans Day weekend, we had Thanksgiving then.
One snag was finding a turkey, but one was found in Atascadero, although
several pounds larger than I had suggested.
We started the day figuring on having 8 people, but ended up with 12. Which, of course, turned out OK since the
turkey was several pounds larger than expected.
We have one great grand-daughter who loves, yes, loves, to peel
potatoes!! She is five years old, and
put her on a stool, wrap an apron around her little self, give her peeler, and
she is non-stop on a five pound bag.
What a gem of a kid our Alyssa is.
Since we are still a tad water short, I had all paper stuff so one of
the younger ones just walked around the table with a garbage bag, and voila,
the dishes were done, almost.
But the most
exciting thing that has happened in the past week was my driver’s license
renewal. Bill had not made an
appointment earlier this year, and had to watch people walk in who had
appointments, and walk out while he sat there for an hour. So, he convinced me to make an
appointment. Which was a snap on the
internet. Once I found out how to locate
the DMV, that is. I found a time that
was convenient for me and sent off the form.
I received a nice printable confirmation back, which I did print and put
with my renewal notice. About two days
before the dreaded day, I also received a robo call from the DMV reminding me
of the appointment, and asking if I wanted to cancel please press some
key. If I wanted to keep the
appointment, I was to just hang up, which I did. That was easy.
For a couple of
weeks ahead of time I had been scanning the on-line drivers handbook, and had
been taking the sample on-line written tests, which was really helpful, it
turned out. Had I taken the time to read
the renewal notice carefully, I would have noted that I only needed to take the
written test, not the driving one. I
always dread that one because I have never learned to parallel park. This always concerns the DMV drive-along
person for some reason. Once one of them
got really upset and asked what in the world I did if I needed to park. Whereupon I told him I drove around until I
found a parking place I could use, then got out of my vehicle and walked to
where I wanted to go. I reminded him
about walking – that it involved putting one foot in front of the other in the
desired direction. He didn’t get the
humor.
When I got to
the DMV location in Paso Robles and opened the door, there was a red carpet
leading to the window that was for people with appointments. How nice!
The lady there took my printed confirmation form and renewal notice, put
it together with another form and sent me off to Window 5. Another lady took my check, printed off some
other forms, put them together along with the dreaded written test, and sent me
off to the tables behind Window 8 up against the wall. So there I was, looking at the first
question, and I didn’t have a clue as to what answer of the three they
wanted! Not an auspicious beginning, to
say the least. So, I finally calmed
down, thought about what I do all of the time, and checked that answer
box. Most of the questions were pretty
straight forward, like crossing over a yellow double line or parking when the
curb is painted red.
Then I came to
one that really stopped me. The
questions was if you see a driver texting while driving would you: 1, leave as
much room as possible between you and that driver, 2, alert the police, or 3,
signal the other driver to stop texting.
That last one was a no-brainer since if the driver was texting, the
driver wouldn’t see you signaling, and to signal, you had to stop watching the
road ahead of you. Definitely not that
answer. In my mind, considering where I
live, the first answer was the only reasonable one – keep as much distance
between yourself and the texting driver as possible. But then I thought that probably this test
was written by someone who lives in the city (Sacramento), has blue tooth in
the car with a voice activated smart phone which would make it simple to alert
the police. But, hey, when you live
where I do, with cell phone usage iffy at best, and generally sheriff response
some 20 minutes away minimum (not their fault since they have to cover a very
large geographical area), this is not the optimum answer. Since there was no way anyone could know
these little nuances to the test, I answered to alert the police. There were other answers that I just guessed
at.
With trepidation
I took the test back to Window 8 where a gentleman took the test, then told me
I had gotten 100%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I
guess all of that looking at the handbook and taking those sample tests had
really helped. And thank all of the
saints in heaven that I didn’t have to explain that I have never learned to
parallel park, and have never found it to be a problem. I just walk.
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