Saturday morning grocery shopping has turned into my favorite weekend 'mom' time. Leaving home by 8 AM means arriving at the store just after it opens at 8:30 (this is the bigger, modern-ish grocery south of us) and, even with a quick stop at the Royal Oven Bakery for a roll, getting there and back by 9:30 or so.
This Saturday, however, the French School on the peninsula was having a boot sale (rummage sale) and I decided to go and see if I could score some baking sheets. They are between $10-20 new here for little cheap-o sheets, and I scored three antique, but usable, baking sheets for just under $1 each at the sale. I took some friends along, and decided to grocery shop that evening. Len had worked all day and it was good to be in the car alone as the sun set behind me.
Humming 'The Freaks Come Out At Night' as I cruised down to Shoppers, I realized that I have only been driving one month here. Yes, I was chicken for an entire month after we moved here and only went out if Len drove.
It reminded me of the movie Traffic, with Catherine Zeta Jones and her drug-trafficking husband. When he is arrested, she is shocked and surprised that he is involved in illicit dealings, but quickly realizes that her comfortable lifestyle is about to end and picks up the business where he left off. She quickly turns from a sweet mom and housewife to a savvy, cutthroat drug lord. It is unsettling how seamlessly she moves from one life to another.
Now understand that nobody here is involved in anything illegal, and Len has not been arrested. But my transformation from timid rulemonger to fullblown agressive driver has been no less shocking than Zeta Jones' Jekyll and Hyde.
So Saturday night, as I flew down to the grocery store, windows down and passing whomever I could however I could (if there are laws regarding this, someone please inform me), it occured to me - I've come a long way in the last month. From being afraid to being downright aggressive. If you are just an assertive driver here, you will be passed on the road or while waiting to turn into traffic and the drivers will shake their heads and roll their eyes. I am trying to get over letting this hurt my feelings as I find a balance between pulling into moving traffic like everyone else going around me is, and waiting for a reasonable opening (which the car behind me just zipped around me and took!!!)
Some fun things I've seen in traffic lately include two large cows in the back of a tiny white pick-up truck (wish I had my camera for that one!), numerous trucks full of men all standing up in the bed of the truck, racing down the road and getting some pretty long air time over speed bumps, people going the wrong way around roundabouts because they are too lazy to go the 3/4 distance correct route. There are a lot of driving school vehicles here, too. A sign of the growth?
There have been some fun times, too, like driving through water so deep that it was sloshing in through the bottom of our truck's door. And the taxi ride I took with the kids in a sedan; we drove through water halfway up the door that was coming in the floorboards and soaked our bottoms through the cloth seats. But we made it through both situations with no trouble.
