My license expired last Tuesday, on my birthday, and since then I have been misbehaving every time I drive. What can I say, I live on the wild side, driving around for six days with an expired license. I went to the MVA this morning (that would be the Misbehaving Vehicles Administration), figuring that I would be there for two hours, dreading the prospect of another five years with a license picture that makes me look like I’m in a cult -an angry cult, bent on the destruction of your leaders and crops- and without any good ideas about how to misbehave at the MVA, other than looking at something naughty on my iPhone. Actually, I hadn’t even thought of that. Really, I brought work.
To my surprise, I was out of there in fifteen minutes with a thoroughly cute license picture. With the exception of my last one, the cult one, I have been fairly lucky with license pictures over the years. Of course, I did have a non-photo ID for a really long time. Now I have five years ahead of me to enjoy my pretty picture, until this new license expires WHEN I TURN FORTY.
I am one driver’s license away from FORTY. Well, damn if that doesn’t put things in perspective.
FORTY.
You know how thirty-five is one of those ages that real adults are, and I am that age and that doesn’t entirely make sense to me sometimes, what with the underpants and big bronze ass pictures and all? Well, FORTY is even more that. It’s that plus five.
Since the license renewal went quickly -the same way that everything goes quickly and soon I will be FORTY- I decided to give myself an hour off and stop into Ross. This was a good choice. I haven’t had a Misbehaving Tuesday Shoesday in a while, and I was delighted to find the perfect thing: eleven dollar sandals that are colorful, comfortable, and just a little gaudy. Also challenging to capture in a picture.
And, yes, as a matter of fact, that is a trail of flip-flops behind me. This is the last really brutal week of the semester, and my house is a disaster. No, it’s a fucking disaster. Not only are there trails, but there are piles.
I am looking forward to lots of things about wrapping up all of this mayhem, but mostly I am looking forward to a cleaner house. There are trails and piles everywhere, I am in denial about the bathroom floor, and it is making me a little bonkers.
Even in the afterglow of cheap, fun sandals, the usual Tuesday errands had me out of sorts. I was driving home and feeling undone, so I just kept driving, up Falls Road past the McMansions and private schools, looking for a little park where I could turn the music up and sit in the car and just cry my guts out for a few minutes. I couldn’t find a park, so I hung a right when I saw Shawan Road, figuring if I couldn’t find a park, than a parking lot would have to do. As it was, the last time I had a big drive and sob it was on my not-so-fun thirty-fourth birthday, when I ended up in the parking lot of the Wegmans at Hunt Valley Town Center, eating a pint of ice cream (technically, Rice Dream, but the same idea) and calming myself down in the most stereotypically female fashion I could manage.
Today I went to the far edge of one of the back parking lots, turned the music up as loud as it would go, and waited for the release. It didn’t happen. So I sat for a bit in hormone hell, staring out at the trees. I considered ice cream, but talked myself out of it, and realized that if I was able to talk myself out of ice cream it wasn’t really hormone hell. More like hormone heck. I chose noise, surrender, and trees. There is something about the trees around Hunt Valley that look exactly right to me, and it helps. It’s how I knew I would end up living around here, even when we were looking at houses in the city. After twenty minutes or so, I headed home.
I thought about making cookies, but got down to homework instead. All things pass. One last brutal week, then more yoga, lots more yoga, and a little less chaos on the inside and the outside.
